Here's the least appetizing burger ad of 2013

Presenting women as sexy food is nothing new in the ad world. But it's doubtful that any other fast food advertiser will top this Australian ad for "Goodtime Burgers" in tastelessness.

mUmbrella's Alex Hayes reports that this ad appeared in December’s issue of The Beast, a community magazine in Bondi Beach, to promote the opening of a new restaurant.

Consumer reaction was swift and negative.

From the Advertising Standards Bureau report:

A sample of comments which the complainant/s made regarding this advertisement included the following:  A burger patty and accompanying lettuce etc is lodged in a woman's private part, the woman's body and private parts are objectified as something for people (probably men) to consume. 

The advertiser responded:

...the advertisement has no intention to be obscene. The image which features a woman’s rear in the fore-ground is not heavily detailed. The image which acts as a burger bun does not feature obscene body-parts, rather uses the shape of a rear to form the shape of a burger. The purpose of the advertisement was and still is to be eye-catching, iconic, memorable and to ride on the coat tails of everything associated with Bondi Beach. 

And the Bureau ruled:

...although the advertiser intended the image to be a humorous depiction, the close up image of the woman’s bottom and the portrayal of her bottom as a burger likened the woman to a piece of meat or object for consumption and objectified women. The Board also considered that this depiction of a woman as a burger is exploitative of women and degrading.  

And disgusting, quite honestly.

It's not even an original idea. The image is ripped from a Photoshop gag that made the rounds a few years ago, when Kim Kardashian was a spokesperson for American burger chain Carl's Jr. The real ad was a typical "sexy" one from the chain, but some nameless wag took it one step further:

Once again, ewww.

Let's hope 2014 doesn't unearth anything worse.

Fashion brand adopts "will strip for attention" strategy

This could be the sleaziest use of sex in advertising that you will read about today. French fashion brand Vicomte A. hired Fred & Farid, Shanghai, to create an online campaign that allows users to undress a woman (or a man, apparently) by sharing promotions for items of clothing.

The portfolio video claims incredible success: >150,000 Facebook shares; >300,000 Twitter accounts accessed; 150% increase in Facebook "likes" and a fivefold increase in traffic to their e-commerce site:



Hey, waitaminute! Isn't something missing here? Sales figures?

Getting people to share information for a reward — whether is be voyeurism, altruism, or even just looking cool —is easy. The real problem is one of conversion.

Online fundraisers know only too well that you can emotionally trigger a user to share your cause, but you can't make them open their wallets. Using sex in advertising for attention is another part of the same problem. You can get tonnes of earned media and shares by titillating and outraging the internet with blatantly sexualized images of people, but to sell product you still have to brand and convinced based on that products actual benefits. Even a fashion brand, which depends on intangibles like cool factor, has to be able to deliver by providing great looks and a label that will impress peers.

This is French fashion. It looks pretty good. But check out the prices:

I'm going to hazard a guess that this campaign — which owed its viral success to men who had nothing better to do than to show all their friends they were willing to prostitute their social media persona for a peek at online nudity — was not well-enough targeted to people actually willing to shell out $383 USD on a goddamn pair of pants.

Sure, they'll click a call-to-action. But where are the sales?

Tip via Ads Of The World

K-Y and the sexual objectification of fat middle-aged men

I'm not going to complain too much about this one, because it made me chuckle with a bit of self-effacing irony. But let's watch and see what issues this lube campaign from DDB Toronto raises:



You see, it's funny because the "warming" lube is so effective, the chubby old slob is irresistible to his more put-together wife.



While I think mature men like me can take the hit on our egos, there is another angle to consider here. In an AdWeek post on "Hunkvertising," my social media friend David Gianatasio interviewed another blogger peer, Sociological Images' Lisa Wade, about what the trendy treatment of men as sex objects in advertising actually says about women.

Many ad experts and social critics see the whole thing as a harmless turning of the tables following decades of bikini-clad babes in beer commercials. Double entendres abound when dissecting the trend, the overriding feeling being that it can’t be taken all that seriously because, after all, we are just talking about guys here. “We’re all in on the gender-reversal joke,” explains Lisa Wade, associate professor of sociology at Occidental College. “It’s funny to us to think of women being lustful.”

When the lust is treated even more ironically, as with these men who are not exactly Isaiah Mustafa, both the woman's lust and the man's sexual desirability are the gag.

As Dr. Wade added in her post about the post she was interviewed for, "the joke affirms the gender order because the humor depends on us knowing that we don’t really objectify men this way and we don’t really believe that women are the way we imagine men to be."

And here, the men aren't either. It's good for a laugh, but over the long term is it good for men and women?

Never forget: Nude female bodies are luxury goods

Or, at least, they can sell luxury goods.

The Vagenda shared this series of images, scanned from the pages of the Evening Standard’s Deluxe Magazine.

Here's their commentary:

Once I’d got over the slight amusement at the idea that we should ‘bare all to show off the season’s most luxurious accessories’ (that’s right ladies, when you spend that much on a handbag the best way to wear it is in the buff!) I was left quite freaked out by these images. The body in the spread has been so dehumanised through the lack of face in any of the shots, and through the positioning of the body as a prop, that it resembles a piece of furniture. This woman's body has been objectified to the point that it’s no longer the object of the photograph, rather a nice background to draw the eye to a ridiculously expensive bag. 

I don't have much more to add, except that it is all painfully pretentious.

At least Robin Thicke showed faces...

Real nurses fight MTV over sexy nurse reality show

Via MTV

Home of Jersey Shore and Teen Mom, MTV is not exactly known for respectful or dignified portrayals of people in their reality TV shows. This time, however, they may have picked on the wrong cliché.



"Scrubbing In" follows a group of nurses on and off the clock:

What do you get when you mix the drama of "The Hills" with the partying of "Jersey Shore," and then put everyone in Crocs? That would be "Scrubbing In," MTV's newest docu-drama series that follows young nurses who temporarily uproot themselves to tend to the sick in different parts of the country. In this case, the destination is Orange County, and while the weather is picture-perfect, the emotional climate will call for many an umbrella.

As the trailer shows, the climate calls for a few condoms as well.

From MTV's point of view, I can see how this seems like reality TV gold. Attractive nurses who work hard and play hard, living communally. Who wouldn't want to watch that?!?

Nurses, that's who. The president of the Ontario Nurses' Association, Linda Haslam-Stroud, wrote an open letter to MTV (who also broadcast in Canada):

“It is insulting and simply unacceptable to those of us who use our skills every day to provide quality patient care. The nurses portrayed in the show [are presented] as sexual objects, exploit negative stereotypes and diminish the fact that we are knowledgeable health care professionals who make the difference between life and death for patients every day.”

The ONA has thrown its considerable support behind an online petition and Facebook group, launched in the United States, to cancel the show.

ONA has been successful before in fighting the sexual objectification of their profession. Organized action against Cadbury-Schweppes led to the premature demise of this Dentyn Ice campaign:



A full season of TV production, however, is a much bigger dragon to slay. But it's worth a shot.

The problem with the objectification of nurses is more than a sociological one. In Canada, one third of all nurses report being assaulted by a patient. A Florida survey in 2008 had almost three-quarters of nurses reporting an on-the-job assault.

Assault by patients takes many forms, from verbal and emotional to physical and sexual, but in all cases the portrayal of women in the profession as hypersexualized party girls is hardly helpful in creating a safe environment for them as they care for people in close quarters. They work in constant fear of being stalked by patients.

Nurses really deserve better than the reality show treatment. Everyone does. But considering the profitability of sleaze these days, is there any real chance of changing corporate TV minds?

Via Change.org

Sexy hamburger ads: What are they really saying?

This ad, starring Katherine Webb (Miss Alabama USA 2012) is just the latest in a long line of ads from Hardee's/Carl's Jr. that take the comparison of food to sex to silly extremes. In the one above, Ms. Webb follows in the footsteps of Kate Upton as she basically simulates sex with processed meat on a bun.

But what kind of sex, exactly, is it supposed to be? And how is this ad formula actually selling burgers?

No, I'm serious. What human organ is the burger standing in for? "Burger" has long been a slang term for the vulva, indicating that these ads are borrowing interest from lesbian fetish porn created for straight men.

And why is this appealing? Because it's the ultimate objectified female sexual performance for the male gaze.

From talkingphilosophy.com:

The real reason why the idea of lesbianism so fascinates many straight men is one that is easier to understand if one is. Having some philosophical awareness also helps. For the real reason is closely connected with the phenomenology of sexual fantasy, which works via virtual identification. In other words: it is about imagining yourself into the position of one of the sexual partners. In the case of lesbianism, a straight man seeks to imagine himself into the position of one of the partners, desiring the other woman of the pair – and then can immediately switch into the second woman’s subject position, desiring the first. (This back and forth virtual-switching of identification is especially delicious because of course it tacitly involves the illicit thrill of  being a woman, at the level of imagination, as well as desiring one.)  It works especially for the male fantasist when both the women in question are ‘desirable’ (e.g. porn models, or ‘lipstick lesbians’) and/or when the limbs etc. of the participants are so entwined that it is slightly hard to tell who is who. A man may get very over-excited by rapidly – ‘deliriously’ – switching subject-positions in his imagination, and work himself up in a way that doesn’t have a direct parallel in situations of heterosexual desire.

Not sure I totally agree with all of that (the stereotype I hear is the expectation that they're just getting warmed up for a FMF threesome starring the viewer) but it does raise some interesting thoughts about the ads. What, exactly, are we men supposed to fantasize about that will result in wanting to eat that hamburger? Cunnilingus?

While not every man may not be  as big a fan of the act as Michael Douglas, this seems like a logical explanation of what desires are being compared here.

But then you have to take this kind of thing into account:

Via Adpressive

Waitaminute. The burger is a penis now? This infamous Singaporean Burger King ad seems to invite an image for men of being on the receiving end. But how is that supposed to excite a straight man about putting one in his mouth?

To make all the sexualized burger marketing even more confusing, Hardee's/Carl's Jr. is apparently test marketing a "footlong cheeseburger":

Via OC Register

To summarize:

1) This hamburger is part of a hot threesome that you are about to get involved in by pretending to be going down on one of the women when you eat this hamburger, and

2) This hamburger is a really big penis that you want to put in your mouth.

Or maybe it's this:

3) This hamburger ad is an excuse to make you feel powerful by watching women perform sexually for you, and (by the way) you can eat a burger as big as you wish your penis was.

(I'm being facetious in the post. What's really happening isn't product marketing, it's branding with new product info along for the ride. Turning people on has been proven to create positive brand associations and to impair judgement.)

Sex in booze marketing reaches its natural conclusion (nudity)

Censored for thumbnailing

This is difficult to take seriously:

The idea of founding our own spirit label was born in our time as barkeepers in a cocktail bar. 

Even in those days we only worked with the best spirits to achieve an optimal taste adventure. With age our experience and aspiration increased. However, we noticed quickly that it's not just the taste which makes you enjoy a drink fully. Good flavour is the basis, the conveying feeling, the highlight. Because of our great interest in the best spirits, we came across a Vodka, filtered above diamonds. A nice idea to convey the feeling. However, for us there is nothing more than the erotism of a beautiful woman. To create the perfect taste we let every single drop of our spirits run over the breasts of a special type of woman, a type we recognize in this liquor. This sensuality awakens the true character of our brands and gives them an identity, a soul, a spirit, a G-Spirit.

Click here to see the rather porny "trailer" video that introduces you to the models and their breasts.

From their Q&A:

Is it true that the whole content of the bottle run over the breasts of the model?

G-Spirits: Yes, indeed! It´s not just a marketing gag.   

I guess it depends on your definition of "gag." The company makes rum, whisky and vodka, all of which have run over a woman's bare chest.

The first G-Spirit collection is limited to 5000 bottles per variety, so 2500 liters run over the breasts of the model? 

G-Spirits: No, 2500 liters all at once are too much. We produce smaller quantities,  on demand we make new appointments with our models.

The German company doesn't seem to see any problem with the extreme sexual objectification or the odd fetishes involved in their product. Me, I don't even know where to start...

Tip via Illegal Advertising