Provence, France - Fresh Confidence

in late june and early july, my sister and i traveled with a friend, e*, from aix en provence to arles to avingon, and, since we had a car, we visited many other towns. on the first night my sister asked me if i had the toothpaste (we had decided to share a tube for the sake of space). e* came out of the bathroom and offered us hers - colgate's fresh confidence. my immediate comment, "that sounds like a feminine hygiene product," was met with a quizzical look. e* is originally from germany, and i guess the massengill commercial where the daughter asks her mother about a "not so fresh feeling" was not dubbed into german.

so is the reason colgate actually named a product fresh confidence that the advertising and marketing staff were not in the us in the 1980s or are they just too young to remember? or maybe someone higher up in the company came up with the name, and i can only guess that his/her subordinates were too embarrassed to explain why the name might make customers snicker and be accidentally stocked in the feminine hygiene aisle

after visiting the fresh confidence web site, i have to go with the too young to remember argument. colgate appears to be appealing to teens and maybe the adult swim market, as they have cartoons featuring "the confidentals" - a group of college kids who somehow have all of their problems solved with a squirt of fresh confidence. the tag line: get fresh with the confidentals. i didn't realize that toothpaste could turn into a mobile phone or silence your roommate's music by turning into a pair of headphones that plug into the stereo. all along i thought that fresh confidence only got rid of a female's not so fresh feeling. maybe colgate should show that in a cartoon.