• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, May 13, 2024

With the coming of spring, cue the bagpipes, because here comes Mr. Scott Scott, the Scot for Scotts Lawn Care, who is so fierce and red-beardy in a raw, Braveheart kind of way that he’s almost too much man for the screen. Roar!

Introduced last year in a campaign from Mullen/Lowe, he’s an infectious, uncanny figure. It’s hard to decipher how fake all the bright orange facial and cranial hair are. Certainly, he’s an intimidating one to alight on any lawn.

 He just appears, standing there in a brown suede vest and pantaloons/ankle boots number, which is timeless in my book for a woodsman.

“Weeds!” he screams. “They have ya surrounded!” he says, rolling his r’s. “Are you just gonna stand there, or are you going to take it back? “

His lungs overpower the turf, where a wife and husband homeowner are standing near their swing set, intimidated. They  say tentatively, “We’re gonna take it back?”

Then we see some weed whacking, courtesy of  Scotts Turf Builder Lawn Food in action.  The Scotsman booms “Glorious!,” shattering most suburban ear drums while bellowing directly up at the sky.

 The male turf builder starts to follow suit in the bellowing department, when the wife gives him a flat “No.”

The Scot for Scotts is played by the red-headed actor Kristofer Hivju, who is actually Norwegian, but rolls with an aggressive brogue. You might recognize him from playing Tormund, leader of the Wildlings, in “Game of Thrones.”  According to Wikipedia, Tormund was also named Hornblower for the power of  his lungs, as it is said that he can laugh the snow off mountaintops.

The character also looks into the camera with his signature line, “Feed It. Feed your lawn,” which I somehow heard as “Feed it -- feed it love!”  I felt overwhelmed, like he was coming on a little strong.

Still, this playing up of the Scot stereotype and manly man is kind of a campy, charmingly self-aware groundbreaker.

 I found it more funny than dumb, rather than stereotypical (see Groundskeeper Willie on “The Simpsons”) or corny.

This spring of ’24, our Scot returns, this time with a white coat over his costume, carrying a medical bag. 

Now, he’s hopped up on “disease prevention” -- which, when pointed out, embarrasses the local homeowners, as if it’s something to be whispered about.

“I thought watering would help the dry spots,” says a woman, who seems uncomfortable in the presence of Dr. Scott.  Perhaps she’s struggling with white-coat syndrome.

“That’s lawn disease, and Scot’s  Turf Builder Healthy Plus Law Food will cure it,” he tells her.

“Lawn disease?” she seems astonished to be told. “It’s been going around,” whispers the newly installed doctor, who at one point takes a stethoscope to the lawn.

‘So like other people have it, and….?” she asks, needing reassurance.

There’s something subversive and weird in considering lawn fungus to be a dirty or intimate issue, to be whispered about. It seems the Scotsman takes his doctoring skills, as a specialist in modern lawnology, very seriously. But the woman takes it a bit personally -- though it’s not to be confused with gynecology.

In another spot with a lawn-owning man, the doctor asks him if he wants help with applying the healthy plus stuff to his lawn, to cure his grass’s disease, and the self-conscious man shrinks back, and whispers that he knows how to use his spreader.

It’s an amusing way to cover an annoying issue, but this year’s spots are a little more awkward than the sheer bellowing dazzle of last year’s campaign.

Of course, this manliness is a 180-degree turn from that other spreader of garden growth, Martha Stewart, the earth mother now promoting Miracle-Gro.  Wearing an earth-colored jumpsuit, Martha’s all about the dirt, kneading it in her hands. Her sidekick gardener needles her about being a “dirt nerd” -- and she agrees that she is one, proudly.

Is Martha taking the high ground, or do you prefer the more complicated, foreign, uncanny valley visitor from the upland heath?

It’s not a turf war. For this growing season, as long as our bold Scotsman  remains comic and self-effacing, the lawn-curious are in for some interesting -- but perhaps slightly  blue -- pitches.