13 most popular posts of 2013

Since starting this bog, almost five years ago,  I've been working to find my niche among ad bloggers.

I'm still working on it. As you'll see from the list below, scandal still "sells" the most clicks online. While I don't purposely write for linkbait, I've learned my lesson about the SEO dangers of putting the words "teen," "sexting" and "nudity" in the same headline. I have a feeling I disappointed a few creeps with that one...


#13 This is how you do sex in advertising

I was a little worried at first, with the lesbian fetish cliché of the two women kissing, but when bethonged spokesman Brandon Allen gets in bed with the threesome, the ad achieves a kind of self-deprecating charm and irony.


#12 No, this is not a "real" Russian Tampax ad

This nasty little clip, which is making the viral rounds of HuffPo, LiveLeak, etc., is not a "Russian Tampax Ad". According to its own YouTube "about" section, it's a promotional video for the bizarre mess known as "Movie 43".


#11 Can this kind of teaser campaign still be effective?

It's like a combination of the fictional Gabbo! campaign from The Simpsons and early meme site Zombo.com.

So what is it for? I'm not that curious, really. I'm more interested in seeing if such an old-school teaser campaign can still work, without either being prematurely outed or simply forgotten about before it reaches critical mass.


#10 This push-up bra gag has been done before

Seem familiar? You might be thinking of a similar Dutch campaign, starring Andrej Pejić, from a couple of years ago.


#9 Travel campaign offers a brutal take on mob mentality — but is it for real?

To me, this is another example of belief in the stupid old adage that there's "no such thing as bad publicity".  There is... for brands. It's the creative teams and agencies that really benefit from these "edgy" campaigns, as the ad community congratulates them for convincing someone else to pay for another self-serving attempt at notoriety.

#8 Billboard celebrating "remarkable women" shows only men

The men are all donors to the campaign. Which is great. And the campaign itself is a good one. But the paternalism of the billboard, even if unintentional, is baffling.

#7 This could be the worst Facebook ad of all time

If you don't recognize the face in the ad, that's Rehtaeh Parsons, a Canadian teen who committed suicide last April after being raped at a party while too intoxicated to consent, and experiencing extreme online sexual harassment and abuse when photos of the crime were circulated among her peers.

Whether the company used the photo accidentally or on purpose is unknown. The web site the ad directs to is no longer online.

#6 Advertising rape culture in anti-rape campaigns

Victim-blaming. It's ugly, it's hurtful, and it's doing nothing to stop people from raping other people.

In the aftermath of the Steubenville rape trial, in which two teenage men were convicted of raping and humiliating an unconscious teenage woman, it's time we had another look at what these supposedly-helpful ads are saying. 

#5 Pussy Riot appropriated again, this time by Vanessa Hudgens

I've written before, both here and on Osocio, about the appropriation of anarcho-feminist group Pussy Riot's knitted balaclava brand. Here's the latest sighting, from former Disney star Vanessa Hudgens'  '$$$ex' Teaser Video.

#4 Low-fat cheese brand makes fun of diet industry clichés aimed at women 

More and more brands are realizing that the best way to reach women is to make fun of the way everyone else tries to reach women.

The menstruation products industry has been doing this for years. Fashion, too. So low-cal foods might as well get into the action. And who knows cheese better than a cheese manufacturer?

#3 This vintage ad illustration makes photoshopped ads look realistic by comparison

Portraying unrealistic body types in ads and fashion is nothing new.

#2 "You're not the first" to do this awful, sexist concept, either

Aston Martin says in their blog that the ad is fake. But it's been done for real, several times.

#1 Parenting magazine shock advertises with "teen" sexting image (partial nudity)

Don't panic — it's an ad. The models are obviously adults. But is using a titillating image a good idea, even if it's saying "we're against that sort of thing"? It's as if the all-male creative team at Jung von Matt were a little too into this one. As a result, in my opinion, they just end up contributing to the problem of adults fetishizing teen sexuality.

Well, that's it for 2013. Happy New Year, and thanks for reading.

A New Year's Resolution for the Ad Industry

Repeat after me: "I will not appropriate women's sexuality to sell unsexy stuff..."

This will be a hard one to keep, as long as Kate Upton keeps offering her services to the big brands. But let's put aside the feminist angle for a moment and look at this as professionals: Oversexed advertising is creatively lazy. It's borrowed interest.

On one hand, it definitely increases brand awareness, because anything that primal will cause controversy and arouse plenty of views. But does sex really sell product?

Source: streetcouch.com via Tom on Pinterest

The intuitive answer is "yes". And science tends to back it up. A recent study at Yale showed that male capuchin monkeys shown explicit images of sex and power really did prefer “brands” associated with them. Social scientists Dan Ariely and George Loewenstein experimented on human males, and found that the more sexually aroused they were, the poorer their judgement became on matters of morals and self-preservation. The topics at hand had to do with their propensity to engage in risky and even criminal sex acts. But it's a fairly easy leap to assume that aroused men also make poor consumer decisions.

Source: workthatmatters.blogspot.ca via Tom on Pinterest

Or as Men's Health put it, "You act like a goof with the Hooters waitress, leaving a tip that doubles the bar bill. But why? Beautiful women cause a man's limbic system (the amygdala and other brain-stem structures, which are in charge of emotion) to fire up at the same time that his PFC checks out, leaving the judgment area vacant."

Source: workthatmatters.blogspot.ca via Tom on Pinterest

You'll note that much of this research has been focussed on men. What about women? The Next Web reports that "Women make or influence 85% of all purchasing decisions, and purchase over 50% of traditional male products, including automobiles, home improvement products and consumer electronics," and yet "91% of women say that advertisers don’t understand them."

Source: workthatmatters.blogspot.ca via Tom on Pinterest

That's not at all surprising. Only 3% of advertising Creative Directors are women. I can't find a reliable ratio for women Marketing Directors on client side, but I will note that the Chief Marketing Officers of CKE (Hardee's) and DirecTV (responsible for two of those Kate Upton ads) are men.

The conventional wisdom in advertising is that you can never go wrong using women's sexuality in ads, because men want them and women want to be them. But things could change fast.

Source: workthatmatters.blogspot.ca via Tom on Pinterest

In 2012, women started to show their democratic muscle. In the US Presidential election, unmarried women were a huge force in support of Barack Obama. They were mobilized by Republican statements and stances against reproductive choice. A teenager named Julia Bluhm got 86,439 people to help her demand the 17 Magazine to "commit to printing one unaltered—real—photo spread per month" as a statement about healthy body image. As a result, the magazine has made an even bigger commitment to "not alter the body size or face shape of the girls and models in the magazine and to feature a diverse range of beauty in its pages."

Source: workthatmatters.blogspot.ca via Tom on Pinterest

Does this mean that sex in advertising is on its way out? Unlikely. Women like sex too, after all. Most people are attracted to beauty in both sexes, and the promise of sexual fantasies fulfilled. But we, as an industry, can do it much better. Not just because we respect the awesome power of women's sexuality, but because we actually want our clients to succeed.

Here are some conversation-starters from Ira Kalb of the Marshall School of Business at USC:

For the many products that are not related to sex, using sex to sell them does not work. It can even backfire. A recent University of Wisconsin study shows that audiences view ads 10% less favorably if they use sex to sell un-sexy products. This study agrees with the data David Ogilvy accumulated over his long and storied career in advertising. In his book Ogilvy on Advertising, he says that sex sells only if it is relevant to the subject being sold. Advertising Professor Jef I. Richards from the University of Texas says, “Sex sells, but only if you're selling sex.”

Source: workthatmatters.blogspot.ca via Tom on Pinterest

Have a look at Adrants' list of "The 30 Sexiest Ads of 2012" and ask yourself, how many of them are selling sex? It would be a daunting but incredibly worthwhile task for someone more academic than me to chart the success of those various campaigns in actual sales.

But I'm not calling for censorship of any kind. In a free market, at the end of the day, it will be up to women to organize themselves as a consumer force and decide what they are willing to put up with.

Newest Miss Representation Trailer (2011 Sundance Film Festival Official Selection) from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

Call me a prude if you like. The fact is, I consider myself a very "sex positive" person.  (Some of my readers seem to think I'm a little too "positive") I have an instinctive and an aesthetic appreciation of the diverse expressions of the female form and I respect and appreciate the women around me as equal human beings who are not only defined by their sexuality.

I just don't like the way women's bodies and sexuality are commoditized to get cheap attention for brands and products. It's not helping us have a respectful and equal society.

One of the unfortunate lessons I have learned from the internet is how easy it is for people to treat others as objects for their racism, sexism, and general scorn. I can't help but imagine the worst of them jerking off to the ad with one hand while simultaneously typing "what a dumb bitch" in the comments thread with the other. Advertising may not be the worst contributor to rape culture, but why would any brand want to contribute at all?

Source: workthatmatters.blogspot.ca via Tom on Pinterest

I resolve...

I really freaking love cheeseburgers. But this campaign for Dangerous Dan's Diner in Toronto — dripping with both irony and grease — has inspired my New Year's Resolutions for 2011:

I resolve to eat healthier, with less meat and more veggies.

I resolve to reduce the amount that I eat,
and increase the quality of ingredients.

I resolve to support healthy and humane farming and
slaughtering practices (as much as I can) in my food purchases.

Ummm... I forgot what this resolution was about.

Happy New Year, everyone. Be safe. Be healthy. Be excellent to each other.