Jason Morgan - the new face of Armani Acqua di Gio
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The Best Cologne for Men team is aware of their slackness in posting to the blog in recent months, so following our recent post about Sean O'Pry and Paco Rabanne 1 Million, let's talk about another new face of men's fragrance...
Like the frequency of our blog postings, it's been a while since Jason Morgan was named as Simon Nessman's replacement as the face of Armani Acqua di Gio (see our article on Acqua di Gio here): 11 months, to be exact. And as always, we've got something to say about that!
According to this excellent interview with Jason Morgan, after an abortive start in the modelling industry, the poor chap was forced to work (albeit briefly) as a recruiter for an insurance company, hiring accountants. This encounter with the drone-like, tedious world of corporate life - honestly, insurance and accountants? It's corporate purgatory, right there - drove him to try modelling again, and here he is today with one of the most prestigious modelling gigs (in the world of men's cologne anyway).
Well, the video has plenty of echoes of earlier photo campaigns and adverts for Acqua di Gio: the half-naked guy with the ripped body, the water, swimming. None of this is surprising since this is an 'aquatic' men's fragrance.
It's pretty simple stuff: Jason swims through the water, impressively dolphin-kicking his way to the surface.
We don't fail to notice that he's actually wearing a pair of Armani briefs: after all, Jason Morgan is also the face (or should that be the crotch?) of Emporio Armani's line of gents' underwear.
Anyway, the curious thing about some of these men's cologne campaigns is the way the nearly-naked male body is so blatantly offered up for the viewer's delectation. Now, that's fine and normal, of course: why, we men are always doing precisely that in offering up beautiful ladies as just so much meat (just look at our reviews of Davidoff Cool Water and Tom Ford Black Orchid for example).
And indeed, here we get a close-up early on in the video of Jason's headless, sculpted torso and ribcage - check it out, it's like something out of a meat-packing factory. Jason's dished up like so much food for the eye.
But it's strange, isn't it? When the ladies are served up for our viewing pleasure, it's typically with a male audience in mind. But aren't men the audience of this Acqua di Gio advert too? Surely only a minority of us would want to sup on Mr. Morgan's ribcage?
Anyway, we all know that Acqua di Gio is a decent fragrance but very mainstream. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, of course, but it does lead to advertising campaigns that don't try to push the boundaries: Jason Morgan rounds off the vid with the trademark phallic dripping thrust out of the water.
So nothing new to see here, people. Indeed, the most new and original thing here is Morgan's relative oldness: he's thirty-five (mean to say, just check out the skin damage in the interview shots here). So some credit to Armani for bucking the trend there, we suppose.
As for the fragrance, of course it's a classic: check out our review here.
