Let Noxzema Cream Your Face

Noxzema1973

Let Noxzema Cream Your Face is a 1973 30-second television commercial for Noxzema, created by William Esty Company.

Let Noxzema cream your face.Noxzema

Why it works

Joe Namath, the Jets quarterback and Super Bowl III MVP, grins into the camera: "I'm so excited. I'm gonna get creamed." Farrah Fawcett, three years before Charlie's Angels made her famous, lathers his face while a strutting jingle urges, "Let Noxzema cream your face." The line reads as locker-room talk about being flattened by tacklers and as something considerably racier, and that wink is the entire strategy. First aired during the 1973 Super Bowl, the spot is studied as an early blueprint for the Super Bowl ad as a conversation piece: a famous athlete, sex appeal and a phrase built to be repeated the next morning. Smithsonian magazine credits it with establishing the game as an event for advertisers, and Quartz with setting off a wave of celebrity endorsements. It came from the William Esty agency; a 1988 Adweek critique said its suggestive Noxzema shave-cream work, from Gunilla Knutson's "Take it off" commercials onward, had captured two decades of mass-market sexual humor.

Techniques

Testimonial and endorsement Jets quarterback Joe Namath fronts the shaving cream, lending a famous athlete's celebrity and grin to the product.
Humour The promise of getting 'creamed' reads as both locker-room banter and something racier, and that knowing wink is the whole strategy.
Jingles and music A strutting jingle sings the slogan so the suggestive phrase sticks and gets repeated the next morning.