They Already F*cked With It.

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So, remember when I told you that Brut's new licensee, High Ridge Brands, had actually improved the fragrance? Do you recall that little post about how they had taken a turd sandwich from Helen of Troy/Idelle Labs, and tossed it out the window to make room for a vintage formula from 25 years ago? Remember how I told you that HRB had taken the unprecedented initiative to actually listen to their customers, and not cheap out on something that was already cheap to begin with? 

Well, that's already history. After five minutes of doing the right thing, High Ridge Brands went and reformulated their product down. Goodbye excellent reboot. Hello not-as-excellent reboot 2.0. The worst part is, they're proud of this shit. And boy am I pissed. 

I'm not going to type a gazillion paragraphs about this, because there's no point. You can go to your local grocery or drugstore and pick up a 7 oz. "Splash-On" bottle for a few bucks and smell for yourself. You'll be disheartened. Just make sure you hunt down a bottle of the previous version, pictured on the left below. I have two backups of it.

Very Good Formula                   Very "Meh" Formula

As you can see, the latest formula is on the right and has a name and logo change on the bottle. The whole "For Men of Character" schtick is apparently the new High Ridge Brands catchphrase for Brut. We're back to the oversized shield logo, although this time with shiny gold trim, which I have to admit is actually not bad. Also, "Signature Scent" is no longer the fragrance's moniker. It's changed to "Classic." Again, if we're talking graphics alone, the bottle on the left isn't terribly designed or anything, but it's a little hard to read, and frankly the bottle on the right is easier on the eyes. But that's where the improvement ends.

Quick recap: the bottle on the left opens with a surprisingly good citrus top note, followed by a fairly cheap but honestly executed bushel of typical fougère aromatics. It then segues into a rich herbal coumarin note, with lavender and musk in attendance through to the base. It smells simple, but also inescapably smooth and coherent, a beautiful and affable everyday fragrance, much like Fabergé used to make. 

The bottle on the right opens with a disgusting rubbery note of no discernible origin, which rapidly burns off and becomes unexpectedly soapy and fresh-floral. It's a little like a "slice" of Kouros, its musky, neroli-esque brightness, only here there's just no budget for it, and it smells like laundry musk. I sense a bit of grassy coumarin, but now it's competing with that odd freshness. Weirdly, after two hours, the same lavender and musk of the previous formula returns, but at a much lower register. 

It's not surprising really, not if you stop and consider what the deal is with Brut. HRB execs wanted to try a Fabergé-branded late Unilever/Chesebrough-Ponds mod of this stuff (there must be at least fifty different mods for Brut accumulated over the years), and they settled on one that was likely used sometime between 1997 and 2000. They wanted to live dangerously for a change, and take a chance on a pricier formula. 

But here's the problem: the public doesn't really know what it wants. For twenty years, guys on wetshaver boards have been conversing about how pissed they are that Helen of Troy fucked-up their favorite drugstore fougère. This incentivized HRB to do that rarest-of-rare thing, and take a risk. They gave the public what they claimed they wanted: their "old" (i.e., as old as HRB could realistically manage) Brut back. 

And then, what happened? Did guys celebrate online? Did word spread? Did sales pick up? Sure it did! As in, yeah, no, none of that happened. I'm not privvy to the sales stats for how Brut has done in the last two years, but I'd bet my house that despite the increased formula cost, things stayed pretty flat. Despite all the years of kvetching about the crappy Idelle Labs formula, and the discontinuation of Brut Classic, and the eventual clown show of Helen of Troy's ultimate defilement of Brut, the majority of wetshavers and men over forty ignored the little gift HRB gave them. So now it's gone. 

I have some thoughts on why this is. I'm just going to come right out and say it: the way all of these companies have been marketing Brut has been dead wrong, and it's been wrong for decades. The clear mouthwash-sized green bottles. The stupid shield logos. The weird blurbs about "men of character." The lack of any company branding ("Brut" is not a brand, it's the name of the fragrance). The preponderance of Kelly green on the website. The absence of a video commercial marketing campaign. All of this is wrong.

Here's what High Ridge Brands should do, and what they would do if I were in charge. First, I'd fire the entire marketing team, and I'd also can most of the graphic/package designers. I'd ditch the clear bottles and bring back the opaque earth-tone green plastic bottles in 3.5 oz. and 5 oz. sizes, the aftershave in the larger size only. 

"Brut 33" wouldn't return; it would simply be "Brut." No point using the "33" designator in a world where people need everything spelled out for them. But I'd find a way to get Fabergé back on the bottles. An actual brand, even if it's not the real one, so customers can stop feeling like their local Big Box store is shitting out bottles of aftershave. I'd axe the "Splash-On" and replace it with "Splash-On Lotion." Essentially the whole thing would go back to how it looked in the seventies. 

The formula would get modded back to something from the eighties. Post nitro-musk, but pre-laundry musk. I'd reintroduce a heaping dose of anise, which has gone conspicuously missing in the last half dozen iterations, and I'd make sure the musk is rich, deep, and slightly dirty. There would be a bit of that Kouros dirty/clean dynamic, which was inherent to vintage Brut, but with the naturalness dialed up beyond what it was even back then. 

You see, there's no reason why Brut can't smell alive. Patchouli oil isn't mind-bendingly expensive. Lavender oil isn't going to break the bank. Menthol is cheap as chips. Synthetic analogs of ylang, jasmine, and neroli are pretty commonplace. I'd hire a perfumer who could assemble a formula using small but sturdy doses of this stuff, and would "stack" the musks in the base to ensure that the cologne would last no less than twelve hours with normal semi-conservative application. 

My formula would be way, way more expensive than whatever they're using now. This would cut into whatever amazing margins HRB enjoys. But I'd reduce production. Dramatically. Brut is in no position to be in every single goddamn drugstore in the country right now. Brut has been humbled, and its output should reflect that. I'd slash production volume by sixty percent. Goodbye Brut in grocery stores. Goodbye Brut in drugstores. Hello Brut at Big Lots, Burlington, Target, Costco, Sam's Club. 

But it gets better. All of those stores would carry the plastic bottle cologne and splash-on lotion. You go to Dillard's, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale's? Exclusively in those stores, you find the green glass splash in 5 oz. and 2.5 oz, with the cap, chain, and the medallion in 14k gold. The formula would be Creed level in terms of quality, with fine grade lavender, rich tonka, subtle anise, and stuff like methyl dihydrojasmonate and hedione for citrus lift and natural high-grade patchouli blended in with Ambrettex XNM. A 5 oz. bottle sets you back $275; 75 ml. bottle is $195. Brut is junk? It's 1964 again, bitches. 

The profits from the "luxe" Brut would join the marked reduction in manufacturing volume to subsidize the increase in quality and lower profit margin of Big Box Brut. All of this would be spearheaded by an aggressive video marketing campaign on YouTube and whatever lower-tier commercial-ridden package accompanies Netflix these days. The campaign would mimic the Kelly LeBrock ads of the nineties, with a gorgeous cisgender woman telling men what she finds attractive. 

The ad campaign would have two tiers, with one gorgeous woman selling the Big Box Brut, and another hottie selling the luxury version. The slogan for the cheap formula: "I don't wear anything around a man who wears Brut." The slogan for the luxe formula: "Your scent is your destiny." Ironically, the cheap formula gets the chick with the LeBrock-style British accent. The luxe gets the Southern country girl who spends thirty seconds opining about what real women are looking for. 

High Ridge Brands? Call me.