My toddler son said something profound the other day. As we played amid a host of plastic screamthings and clangable salad implements appropriated from the kitchen, a ruminative, far-away look appeared his eyes. Summoning the accumulated wisdom of the ages, he placed a steady hand on my shoulder and said the following: "TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK WIWA [window, through which one might view a truck] TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK WIWA WIWA TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK WIWA!" He punctuated this monologue by pointing towards the wiwa/window and pooping himself orange.

 

What he meant was this: "Dear father, I applaud your efforts to broaden my intellectual palette with song, literature and dinosaurs, but right now I'm all about trucks: dump trucks, cement mixers, tankers, cranes, you name it. I am happy with what I have and with what I know. Let's not overcomplicate matters." He was right, of course. Anyone hoping to entertain him and/or keep him from arching his back and springing out of parental grasp in a fit of crazed trucklust shouldn't give him what they think he wants, or what they think he should want. They should give him what he asks for. A sensible gospel is one that makes sense to a goodly chunk of the disciples to whom it is being preached.

 

My son's thoughtful commentary came to mind as I perused Degree's The Adrenalist, a kind of curated web site aimed at thrill-seeking gnarlydudes who are, at least in theory, deodorant mercenaries. Or at least that's what I think it is supposed to be; the tile-riffic layout and scattershot nature of the clips - staid boxing tutorials sit alongside "extreme waterfall kayaking videos" - make browsing it a nonsensical experience. It's as if YouTube got liquored up with a bunch of casting-central outdoor adventurists and barfed up its cache of outtakes from circa-1994 Mountain Dew commercials.

 

And to what end? Who wants this? Is there demographic research that links deodorant preference with a proclivity to bind one's ankles to a turbine-propelled hang glider? Or is it just more marketing desperation, where a lack of actual insight results in the 36,000th campaign in which rugged 20-something guys whoop and holler as they play outside?

 

One of the featured clips, "The World's Most Insane Rope Swing Ever!!!," neatly encompasses everything that's trite, reductive and just plain lazy about The Adrenalist. You can start with the title, one of many that includes dim-boy adjectives like "extreme," "ridiculous" and "epic," not to mention hyperbolically compounded phrases like "pure awesome extreme." Then there's the homogeneity of the participants: most are white, with the guys wild-eyed and bearded and the pretty-but-not-unattainably-so gals clad in hipster-approved knit caps. Finally, there are the too-frequent close-ups on the participants' faces, which are supposed to amplify the intensity of their mission but do little more than affirm the benefits of attentive dental hygiene.

 

At least in this instance the camera work and editing are top-notch. But so what? There's nothing new here. There's nothing that can't be found in similar quality all over the Web. And there's nothing that forges an authentic brand connection with Degree.

 

The thinking here seems to be "we would like young, active individuals to use our product. Ergo, we will slap our brand atop a bunch of stuff that features young, active individuals doing young-active-individual things, like turbo radical awesome tire-swinging." I can't speak for young people, because I am old and consider a ramble through the farmer's market the pinnacle of ninja extreme adventuretude, but I have to think they're a much tougher sell than The Adrenalist presumes them to be.

 

I empathize with Degree's plight. There's a good chance that Degree smells better and more ably performs feats of odor-mitigation than my current brand. But given that pharmacy chains generally frown on the practice of sniff-testing wares in the deodorant aisle, the brand has to find a way to lure newbies that doesn't involve actual interaction with the product. That ain't easy. Still, compiling a bunch of videos and calling it an afternoon is an almost willfully detached way to approach the task at hand.

 

Meanwhile, how screwy is deodorant marketing nowadays? We have Degree attaching itself to a craze that peaked a decade ago, Axe injecting itself into horndog graphic novels and Old Spice attempting to pioneer new subcategories of silliness. It won't be too long until Speed Stick allies itself with a band whose best days are behind it, or Right Guard enlists a toddler to shout TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK in the hope of striking a viral chord. Desperation breeds defeat.