Islamophobic? Not in those heels!

Via Belgian Elle

BBC reports that shoe designer Christian Louboutin has won a court case to prevent Flemish far-right party Vlaams Belang from using his shoes in one of their anti-islam campaigns.

The legs, belonging to Vlaams Belang Senator Anke Van dermeersch, are marked at intervals of exposure from "Sharia-compliant" at floor level, to "moderate Islam," "provocation" "slut," "whore," "rape," and finally "stoning." The headline reads "Freedom, or Islam?" (All translated via Google.)

A judge at the Antwerp court gave the party 24 hours in which to take down the posters. They replaced it with this one, which replaces Louboutin's iconic red soles with Flemish yellow:

Via The Telegraph

(I'm not sure if that's Ms. Van dermeersch posing again. It seems an odd thing for a politician to do, but she is also a former professional model and Miss Belgium 1991.)

While it isn't surprising that a luxury fashion brand would not want to be associated with this kind of exclusionary political message, it's interesting to note that Louboutin has just launched a line of "nude" shoes in a variety of skin tones.

UPDATE: My Osocio colleague Tatjana (via her friend Srećko Šekeljić) informs me that this ad concept was actually ripped off from an artwork by young Canadian artist Rosea Lake:

Via Huffington Post

When she posted the piece on Tumblr in January, Ms. Lake wrote:

"Judgments"

I took this last year, but in retrospect, I think it’s my strongest piece from high school.

Working on this project really made me examine my own opinions, preconceptions and prejudices about “slutty” women and women who choose to cover all of their skin alike. I used to assume that all women who wore Hijabs were being oppressed, slut-shame, and look down on and judge any woman who didn’t express her sexuality in a way that I found appropriate. 

I’d like to think I’m more open now.

Oh, the irony.

There is now, of course, a Facebook page dedicated to this.

This is a much better way to challenge A&F's brand elitism

Meet Jess, AKA "The Militant Baker". In response to Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries's 2006 comments (gone recently viral) that his brand was only for "cool" people and those who are below a certain size.

Mr. Jeffries has since sort-of apologized. But it hasn't stopped the shitstorm of internet activism against the brand. 

One of the better-known memes has been filmmaker Greg Karber's #FitchTheHomeless campaign, in which he tried to denigrate the brand by donating A&F clothes to LA's street people. But as I wrote in Osocio, that is a problematic scheme as it also denigrates the homeless.

Jess, on the other hand, uses the A&F brand to express her own self-confidence. As she wrote in her open letter to Mike Jeffries:

I was inspired by the opportunity to show that I am secure in my skin and to flaunt this by using the controversial platform that you created. I challenge the separation of attractive and fat, and I assert that they are compatible regardless of what you believe. Not only do I know that I'm sexy, but I also have the confidence to pose nude in ways you don’t dare. You are more than welcome to prove me wrong by posing shirtless with a hot fat chick; it would thrill me to see such a shoot.

Cheers, Jess!

Tip via Buzzfeed

LEGO suffers another PR setback over street harassment sticker

Oh, LEGO... You used to be so cool. You sometimes still are. But too often now,  you're just so far behind the times it's sad.

This puffy sticker set was, according to AdFreak's David Gianatasio, released in 2010 by defunct licensee Creative Imagination. So they had a convenient player to throw under the bus.

But they still screwed it up. At first.

The whole PR nightmare began a little over a week ago when journalist and press freedom organizer Josh Stearns posted a photo of it on his Tumblr bog, Talking To Strangers:

I was stunned. Maybe it’s the fact that I just saw the team at Hollaback speak this month, or maybe it is that this is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, or maybe it is just that street harassment sucks. But chances are it was all three of these things that made me so mad to see a brand I love pushing this sort of thing. 

The Hollaback website notes that street harassment is the most prevalent form of sexual violence for both men and women in the United States. Internationally, they point out, “studies show that between 70-99% of women experience street harassment at some point during their lives.”

The issue was picked up by Slate and championed by the group Stop Street Harassment. That got LEGO's attention.

First, Charlotte Simonsen, Senior Director at LEGO’s corporate communications office, told Josh “To communicate the LEGO experience to children we typically use humor and we are sorry that you were unhappy with the way a minifigure was portrayed here.”

That's what we in the communication industry refer to as a "non-apology". So Josh wrote back and got the following reply from Andrea Ryder, the head of the LEGO Group’s Outbound Licensing Department, who said she was "truly sorry" that Josh "had a negative experience" with a LEGO product. She refered him to LEGO's brand values, including the line "Caring is about the desire to make a positive difference in the lives of children, for our partners, colleagues and the world we find ourselves in, and considering their perspective in everything we do." And she concluded, "we would not approve such a product again."

This is progress in brand responsibility, but it does not happen unless people are willing to speak up about the little things that reveal big problems in our society.


Laura Northrup from Consumerist wrote, "Street harassment isn’t the most pressing issue facing women today, but it can be a problem, and certainly isn’t appropriate for a children’s product."

I beg to differ on how serious this "one little picture" really is.

Just recently, I was having a conversation with someone from Hollaback about street harassment and rape culture. When you look at the big picture, the normalization of sexual harassment through bystander apathy is just one end of a continuum that ends with the dehumanization of women as targets of sexual violence.

Subway location in France offers "straights only" Valentine's deal

Opposing Views reports:

A branch of the Subway chain in Angers, France was forced to close recently after a Valentine’s Day special was offered to heterosexual couples only. 

The store’s owner put up a poster advertising a meal deal for couples that included a footlong Subway sandwich, a drink and a dessert each for 14 Euros. Bracketed next to the word “couples” were the letters “H/F,” indicating a couple was defined as a man and woman only. 

Also on the poster was an asterisk that read: “Discrimination (?) No, the marriage for all law has advanced, but has yet to be ratified by the Senate. Until then, I’ll use my freedom of expression.”

The special offer was apparently made by a rogue franchisee, and spent Subway France spinning on Twitter and Facebook.

On Saturday, when the news had gone global, they even posted in English on their Facebook page:

As we stated in response to many posts yesterday: The SUBWAY ® brand is strongly committed to maintain the values ​​of diversity and inclusiveness in its restaurants around the world and does not endorse in any discrimination of any kind . , we apologize to all the people being offended by individual initiative to promote Valentine's Day a restaurant in Angers, France. All SUBWAY ® restaurants are owned by franchisees and are managed independently. We work with the owner of the restaurant in order to strengthen our values ​​and company policy.

The French National Assembly recently approved a law that would legalize same-sex marriage and give the same rights to all married couples to adopt children. Although the legislation has met with organized protest, a recent poll indicated that 63% of French citizens support equal marriage.

But not, apparently, that one rogue sandwich artist who caused his brand a massive embarrassment.

Consent activists hijack the Victoria's Secret brand

Jezebel reports that a promotional e-mail is circulating, claiming that a new Victoria's Secret line "promotes consent to fight rape in new panties."

"Victoria's Secret is using its nationally-recognized image to lead the country in the next sexual revolution: CONSENT. PINK loves CONSENT is a new line of styles that reminds customers and their sexual partners to practice consent. You can join the "CONSENT REVOLUTION" at pinklovesconsent.com."

The campaign web site  even has a Victoria's Secret copyright claim.

But once you get into it, it's obvious that the whole thing is a critique of Victoria's Secret:

Limited Brands, which owns VS, has denied any involvement. (They're probably contacting their lawyers.)

It's a sendup on Pink Nation, complete with branding.

The group behind the hoax provide links to their campaign Facebook Page and Twitter, on which they are running a consumer lobbying campaign aimed at Victoria's Secret. (They also have non-VS-branded Pinterest and Instagram presence for their "consent panties".

Who is behind this? Feminist duo FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture have claimed credit.

Yesterday, young facebook users hi-jacked the social media outlets of Victoria’s Secret to promote something very different from panties and push-up bras. Within ten hours, over 50,000 people visited PinkLovesConsent.com, where they saw Victoria’s Secret’s image “promoting consent to fight rape.” 

The satirical website was launched at noon on Monday, December 3. According to the site, “PINK loves CONSENT is our newest collection of flirty, sexy and powerful statements that remind people to practice CONSENT. CONSENT is a verbal agreement about how and when people are comfortable having sex.” 

Through Victoria’s Secret’s social media, the concept of consent was cropping up in some unexpected places. The Victoria’s Secret facebook pages were flooded with “I heart consent” posts, excited campus reps were retweeting pinklovesconsent.com, and the “pink hearts” at pinknation.com were declaring their love for “open sex talk.” One employee tweeted, “I am so happy to currently have a job for a company that stands for something so beautiful!! @LoveConsent #victoriassecret #loveconsent”  Highschool students were tweeting “I’m loving the new @LoveConsent! Victoria’s secret goes feminist!” At the outset, 100 young facebook users were in one the prank. It just went viral from there.  

Here is what they hope to achieve:

Will Victoria’s Secret take a nod from the customer fan mail and change their styles? Fighting rape would be a major shift for the brand. Though they are a woman-focused company, VS has never taken a stand on any women’s issue. In fact, their current designs seem to lean more toward rape culture than consent. Their PINK brand, marketed at high school and college-aged women, sports thongs with the slogan “SURE THING” printed right over the crotch. Young women across the country are wearing underwear with “SURE THING” literally printed over their vaginas. We can think of one circumstance where a vagina is treated like a “SURE THING”: rape. 

So if Victoria’s Secret clearly would NEVER promote consent why use their brand for a consent campaign? The organizers say, “We could write a pamphlet about consent.  In fact, we have written and distributed pamphlets about consent.  But how many people are reading pamphlets about sexual practices and how many people are reading facebook post about Victoria’s Secret? Consent needs to become a mainstream idea. Condoms became a mainstream idea in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Just like pausing to put on a condom prevents the spread of STDs, pausing to check in with you partner prevents unwanted sexual experiences. 

Social media is becoming a tool for social change. We have seen the role of social media in revolution in the Arab Spring, but change Victoria’s Secret? “Probably not,” says the organizers.  “We’re not about taking Victoria’s Secret down.  We are about changing the conversation. The sexiness that is being sold to women by Victoria’s Secret is not actually about sex. It is not how to have sex, relationships or orgasms. It in an IMAGE of what it is to be sexy. So while we are sold cleavage, white teeth, clear skin and perfect hair no one is asking us how our bodies feel and what we desire. Victoria’s Secret owns the image of female sexuality, instead of women owning their own sexuality.” 

As the project went viral, some saw right through the shenanigans. Many who knew it was a prank openly wished that it was real.  After a first incredulous look and some detective work, Jezebel blogger Katie J.M. Baker said, “If only Victoria’s Secret focused on empowering women rather than objectifying them!” Bloggers wrote about how the Pink Loves Consent project makes women look powerful and strong. Jezebel users commented on the “fiercely real” body types represented on the site. “Too bad they don’t use some models like her for their regular advertising. The girl’s gorgeous and it’s awesome to see a different body style once in awhile.” A frustrated Facebook user commented, “Damn, I wish these were real. I just got paid.”   And a savvy Victoria’s Secret customer tweeted, “So I guess the #loveconsent campaign isn’t actually affiliated with Victoria’s Secret but they SHOULD BE I WOULD BUY SO MUCH UNDERWEAR.” 

Why do so many women love something they know is not real? FORCE made something that people want, but that a company like Victoria’s Secret can never give them. Imagine how different our lives would be if we put as much time and thought into sharing ideas like consent as we do into selling underwear. 

FORCE apparently used to sell their consent panties on Etsy, but the store is currently empty.

A very effective way to get attention, if you ask me. I hope the PR turns into an attitude adjustment about sex and consent, if only for a few of the people who were hoaxed.

Ikea apologizes for editing women out of its Saudi catalogue

Via Washington Post

The Washington Post reports that Ikea has put itself in an awkward PR situation by digitally deleting images of women from the Saudi Arabia version of its catalogue.

Ikea’s Saudi catalogue, which is also available online, looks the same as other editions of the publication, except for the absence of women. 

One picture shows a family apparently getting ready for bed, with a young boy brushing his teeth in the bathroom. However, a pajama-clad woman standing next to the boy is missing from the Saudi version. 

Another picture of a five women dining has been removed altogether in the Saudi edition.

Back home in Sweden this was such a big deal that the country's Equality Minister, Nyamko Sabuni, commented on it, telling AP, “For Ikea to remove an important part of Sweden’s image and an important part of its values in a country that more than any other needs to know about about Ikea’s principles and values — that’s completely wrong.”

Ikea has since apologized in a statement, saying "We should have reacted and realized that excluding women from the Saudi Arabian version of the catalogue is in conflict with the IKEA Group values." The group responsible for the catalogue added, "We are now reviewing our routines to safeguard a correct content presentation from a values point-of-view in the different versions of the IKEA Catalogue worldwide."

AP ads:

Women appear only infrequently in Saudi-run advertising, mostly on Saudi-owned TV channels that show women in long dresses, scarves covering their hair and long sleeves. In imported magazines, censors black out many parts of a woman's body including arms, legs and chest.

International marketers are often challenged with trying to fit in to regional values while still maintaining global brand values. It wasn't the first time someone called out a big brand for caving to local sensitivities, and it won't be the last. But I think Ikea at least did the right thing by apologizing and promising to make good.

If you want to see more, Copyranter has a good collection of "before and after" images.

F'd Ad Fridays: The truth about factory-made hamburgers

Via Huff Post

Sex sells. To monkeys.

Move over, American Apparel!

The sexiest ad campaign shown at Cannes wasn't even meant for humans. A partnership between Yale and Proton Studio, it was part of a groundbreaking study on whether monkeys could be persuaded by advertising.

And not just any advertising, but explicit images of female sex and male power.

According to New Scientist:

"One billboard shows a graphic shot of a female monkey with her genitals exposed, alongside the brand A logo. The other shows the alpha male of the capuchin troop associated with brand A.

[Proton adman Keith] Olwell expects brand A to be the capuchins' favoured product. 'Monkeys have been shown in previous studies to really love photographs of alpha males and shots of genitals, and we think this will drive their purchasing habits.'"

Humans, on the other hand, are far more sophisticated.

Everyone's a celebrity spokesmodel now

All you have to do is tag a product or company page in your Facebook pics.

Adland writes,

"Ever wanted to be the face of Pepsi? Like Britney shaking her tush in a multi-million dollar ad, making you an 'exceptional earner', and envied by your peers? Well, your time in the limelight is here, you can endorse your favorite brand on facebook."

I'm more of a wine drinker, so I tried it out by tagging a picture of my son with the PEI vineyard we were visiting a couple of years ago:

And there's my little boy,  the new face of Rossignol Winery.

As usual, there are privacy concerns associated with this. But I'd be more concerned with people using te tags to vandalize brand pages.

Old Spice keeps losing momentum

In the case of Old Spice, it can. Following up on last year's phenomenon of Isaiah Mustafa's ads, the company first flunked with Raven Ray Lewis, then brought Mustafa back for a lukewarm sequel, and is now attempting a brand extension with some cheesy white dude:



It's kind of funny, sure. But it's lost that lovin' feelin.

The original campaign was brilliant because although it was a parody of manliness, there was a great deal of sincerity behind the approach. Mustafa really was the ideal man for many women, and while the things he did and proposed were exaggerated, they still struck a chord deep in the viewers' souls. The original campaign appealed to men because it appealed so much to women — the real decision-makers when it comes to what a man should smell like. The guys just wanted to be there to make sure it really was a joke.

The campaign went further by really personalizing the approach, responding to questions on Twitter, and providing over-the-top responses. But you can only pioneer a tactic once.

The campaign, Mustafa's sequels included, has regressed into male-pandering slapstick. It's as if the brand went from Cary Grant to the Three Stooges. The whole indirect marketing insight has been lost.

And women, seriously, how sexy is this?

Zombie Freddie Mercury says, "smell like me!"

Oh well.

Link via Copyranter.

Zamboner

Sometimes it sucks to own a brand category. Just ask Zamboni. Or better yet, Google "Olympic Zamboni fail".

The problem is, those environmentally responsible ice resurfacers that wrecked the ice at the men’s 500 meter speed skating event on Monday weren't Zamboni® brand. They were Canadian-made Olympia machines from Canada's Resurfice, "What every ice resurfacer should be."

According to the CTV coverage of the incident, VANOC says they chose the Canadian supplier due to a significantly lower cost. At the same time, it has long been known that old-style gas-driven machines are really bad for indoor air quality, and that the adoption of electric Olympias was part of Canada's attempt at creating a "green Olympics" image. Oh yeah, and the whole "Canada #1" thing.

What makes this really tragic for the Canadian supplier is that they had beat out a giant in the industry. According to Zamboni's latest press release, they were the exclusive supplier to the Winter Olympic Games in Torino, Salt Lake, Nagano, Lillehammer, Lake Placid, Sapporo, Innsbruck and Squaw Valley, and "participated" in the Winter Olympic Games in Calgary and Sarajevo.

Zamboni got a further boost when it became publicly known that Olympics organizers were shipping in a trusted old Zamboni from the Calgary Olympic Oval — overnight and over the mountains — to fix some of the problems.

You'd think Zamboni would be cheering. But brand leadership does not work that way.

From their release:

"This past weekend, the ice resurfacing equipment at one of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games apparently malfunctioned and was unable to perform its resurfacing task. These machines were not manufactured by the Zamboni Company.

A few media outlets have published inaccurate information regarding those machines, associating the Zamboni brand name with the malfunctioning ice resurfacers.

While it is unfortunate that there was an interruption to the Winter Olympic events, please note: the resurfacers which were on the ice during those events were not Zamboni® brand ice resurfacers and should not be referred to as "Zamboni machines"."

What's the big deal? When you're the leader, you have everything to lose. Just as we commonly call all adhesive bandages "Band-Aids" or all tissue "Kleenex", Zamboni is suffering from being used as a generic term. Intellectual property lawyers hate this, because it means losing control of the brand. (It's also the reason that the cutesy jingle "I am stuck on Band-Aid, 'cause Band-Aid's stuck on me!" has become the awkward "I am stuck on Band-Aid® Brand, 'cause Band-Aid's stuck on me!")

In Zamboni's case, while the brand certainly benefits from name recognition when an Olympia is generically referred to as a "zamboni", they also suffer much more damage when their name is taken in vain over a competitor's fail.

Zamboni got off easy. At least they weren't misidentified as having a key role in a horrible massacre, leading to their name being forever associated with mind cults and control. That honour goes to Kool-Aid. Turns out Jones may well have served up Flavor Aid instead.

Ten concepts that will be redefined in the Twenteens

Whether or not it is mathematically accurate, most of us consider 2010 to be the beginning of a new decade. And with such a break, naturally, come speculations as to what the next ten years are going to be all about.

I'm no futurist, but as a writer I'm interested in how words change their meanings over time. And more importantly, how the big ideas behind them catch up with social evolution.

Here are 10 terms that I think will mean something very different during this decade:


Shame

Even people of my generation are amazed at younger people's lack of what we would call "shame". Just yesterday, I was reading about how a brother, whose sister narced him out for keeping beer in his room, got his revenge by posting her "hookup list" on Facebook and tagging all the guys' names.

Sibling rivalry may be as old as the hills, but when you see this list and the reactions to it, you can see that we're dealing with a generation that doesn't blush. They get mad, sure. They get embarrassed. But I don't get the impression that this girl really felt shame at having written this list in the first place.

Is that wrong? Not necessarily. In fact, when these kids are running the world, I can't imagine what kind of sex scandal could unseat a political leader, since everyone will have done everything imaginable and shared it by then.


Old

Speaking of which, I'm getting old. Or at least, I should be. But one great thing about trailing the Baby Boomers is that they keep raising the bar. First 30 was the new 20. Then 40 was the new 30. 50 the new 40. 60 the new 50. Etc.

It's gotten to the point where I'm not really that concerned about turning 40 this year. As older friends and relatives have shown me, I never really need to grow old.

Here

I'd like to thank you, my dedicated reader, for being here. But where is "here"? I'm writing this in my office, and you could literally be anywhere in the world. This is nothing new, since telecommunication has always made some of this possible, but the ease and richness of it make us so much more present in each other's lives than ever before.

Online meetings, online games, online parties... people are getting together in places that don't actually exist. So at what point will we need a new word for "here" that means "no, like actually in the flesh (and actually paying attention rather than Blackberrying)".


Now

I think the concept of "Now" has also changed, and will continue to do so, in certain contexts. When I write an e-mail to an friend, and I ask "what are you doing now?" I might mean this year, or even since 1989. But when I see them on Facebook or Twitter, I see that they're trying to clean cat barf out of their carpet.

The immediacy in personal communication is risible, but in business it's downright infuriating. But I've already covered that one in another post.


Brand

Originally, a brand was an attempt to give human attributes to a company or product. Now it's gone full circle, and corporate branding techniques are being applied to people.

Way back in 2007, Fast Company said "Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You."

So if a brand is a person, and a person is a brand, then... ?

Oh, forget it. My head hurts.


Conversation

Are we having a conversation right now? Not really. As far as I know I'm just talking at you (or nobody, for that matter). But we may get into one in the comments thread below.

What's interesting about online ideas exchange isn't just that we can have a little Twitter flamewar in almost real time — it's also that a conversation can play out over hours, days, or even weeks on a thread. And I can have several at a time without being rude.

I've actually caught myself recently stating that I had "had a conversation" with someone at over something important, when in fact we had just messaged each other a few times. Maybe that seems normal to you, but I'm still getting used to it.


Ownership

I was at a social media seminar last year where one participant raised concern about the idea of generating so much content for free: "How do I retain ownership of it, if it's out there for everyone to use as they see fit?"

The idea of ownership is changing — from collaborative authorship on Wikis, to hilarious copyright violations on YouTube.

This obviously bothers some owners of more valuable intellectual capital like U2's Bono, who actually went on record saying that ISPs should use Chinese-style policing of the Internet to stop illegal music sharing.

To some people, this might seem to make sense. But it goes against the ideals of Internet culture, and also seems petty coming from a millionaire rock star.

I'm not saying artists shouldn't have the right to protect, and profit from, their own work. I just don't know how they'll manage in a remixing, sharing online world.


Loyalty

This is more one I'd like to see change, rather than one that necessarily will. But the idea is that as people form more and varied connections with other people, they will stop being such all-or-nothing team players.

What I mean by that is that people will stop labelling themselves "liberal" or "conservative" or whatever, but will instead form loyal connections to the individual people and ideas that suit them best, while at the same time always be ready to change alliances if a person or thing lets them down. Think "cat loyalty" rather than "dog loyalty". I actually think that would make for a smarter, better world.


Responsibility

This is another of those old-school words that often gets misapplied in marketing and life. But I think you will see a new sort of responsibility continue to emerge in the next few years, where people can no longer feign ignorance about the impacts of their behaviours, and companies are answerable for their claims, practices, and supply chains.

At least I hope so.


Ad Agency

We've never really had ad agencies here in Ottawa. Because of the size of the market and the nature of the client base, most of us have evolved from design shops to a more integrated and strategic offering.

There have been times when I regretted not moving to a bigger market with "real" ad agencies, but not anymore. While I'm not ready to proclaim the post-advertising era quite yet, the long death of traditional mainstream media is brutalizing the old media commission model. At the same time, old ways of communicating are eroding as consumers just get their best tips from their extended network.

One of the great things about being at Acart is that we're constantly reinventing ourselves. Because we're always changing, we don't have to fear change.

So what will the Ad Agency of 2020 look like? Tune in for my next installment.