Lingerie brand launches massive earned media campaign on sexist Calvin Klein Billboard

You've probably heard about this by now, as it's all over social and mainstream media. Calvin Klein is in trouble over a billboard that stereotypes women being focussed on seducing men, while men are focussed on making money.

The board's down now (according to the brand's PR "as part of the planned rotation of our spring 2016 advertising campaign"), but not before this happened:

The creator of the video is Heidi Zak,  CEO of lingerie company ThirdLove. That's right, a competitor of Calvin Klein's in the underwear industry.

While Ms. Zak is justified in saying that CK's ad is awful, what's interesting is that her brand is all over that video. And her Change.Org petition, Take Down Sexist Billboard In NYC. And the hashtag, #MoreThanMyUnderwear. And, of course, all the earned media.

In short, Ms. Zak has turned anger against a major brand into a highly-effective PR campaign for her own.

It's not surprising that marketers are riding the waves of social media outrage that result from tone-deaf ad campaigns like the CK one. In a way, this is a win-win situation for both CK and ThirdLove, as both are being talked about. CK gets to keep being credibly "naughty," as they have been since the Brooke Shields days. ThirdLove gets to champion the interests of "real women." And all it took was one insulting billboard.

Media may be getting more complicated, but the marketing strategies couldn't be simpler.

Another "stripper" fashion campaign, but with a twist

Hypersexualized campaigns are getting so lazy these days, when I first saw the thumbnail for Steve Hall's Adrants post about this campaign, I thought it was the same one I blogged about yesterday.

It's not. This one, at least has a gag at the end:



Still a pretty embarrassing stripper campaign, but this one has an actual product message about why you, the straight man in the captive audience, need new gitch. The insight is pretty solid. I have some underpants that are holier than the Shroud of Turin.

I'm not sure whether to classify this one as a shock gag or just more run-of-the-mill sex in advertising. If the former, considering it was done with a great deal more "shock" and "gag" just two years ago for cancer awareness by JWT London, this one has some stiff competition.

Hanes tries to hijack a cancer meme, fails

Remember those silly slacktivist things where women were writing the colour of their bra or panties on Facebook to "raise awareness" of associated cancers? So does someone working for Hanes.

AdFreak's Rebecca Cullers writes:

Hanes is asking women to overshare on social media by telling the world the color of their undies. They're pretending that revealing your panty color is some sort of slightly salacious act, and they're willing to offer you free undies if you do it, though it's pretty clear that the whole thing is cleverly disguised market research into preferred panty colors. 

The interactive site over at undercovercolor.com is not super exciting. It asks you to choose a colour from a colour wheel (that oddly includes neither white nor black nor "nude" options)

There's not much else to say about this campaign except that stealing an (old) idea from grassroots social media memes is rather cynical. And pretending talking about panty colour is edgy, in our present age of fetish porn and commando wardrobe malfunctions, is beyond disingenuous.

Australian underwear brand begs you to share their T&A ad

Showing naked people is hardly a novel way to sell underwear. But what is interesting about this ad, for Australian brand Stonemen, is the way they practically beg the internet to make it viral.



Posting this video on Buzzfeed, their marketing team writes:

hi guys, 

we are an australian underwear design company and this is our first video presentation.we have directed and produced this video and we are more than happy for anyone to share, embed, download... 

it portrays a playful side of life while depicting open minded and free spirited youth while having a bit of fun cooling down at the end of hot summers day. 

thanks to our peeps, Simon, Ange, Guy, Brooke, Cade and Rebecca for being part of this video, and a big shout out to our amazing mates for shooting and editing the video for us, cheers to David and Calum. 

the sound track, "that's what you get" is the work of our special friend Lanie Lane... off her new album, "to the horses". 

thanks lanie, thanks everyone, we LOVE you all.

Good luck to them, I guess. But they're trying way, way too hard. And the line, "it portrays a playful side of life while depicting open minded and free spirited youth while having a bit of fun cooling down at the end of hot summers day" sounds like something a cartoon marketing douche would tell a focus group in a parody of the industry, followed by "Look, kids! We gave you tits and ass, we gave you some indy song... This shit is exactly the kind of thing you feel compelled to share with the 800 people you pretend to be friends with on Facebook. Now eat your sandwich and GTFO."

F'd Ad Fridays: 12 awkward days of Xmas from down under

Adrants shared this weird Australian underwear and sleepwear promo. It starts averagely enough, with cute little kids, but as the metaphors get stretched further and further in the quest to relate the song's gifts to people in their gitch, it just gets weirder and weirder.

And occasionally, sort of insulting.

The baritone singer is Jack Ladder. I would have preferred Tay Zonday.

Monday morning Danish comes with a cup of sexual objectification

Helloooo, target market!

This softcore pornvertising video for Denmark's JBS underwear brand manages to insult men and women at the same time, by limiting (t)its appeal to adolescent boys. Whatever.



Via Illegal Advertising

F'd Ad Fridays: Original Awkwardness by Munsingwear

Original Penguin is one of my favourite shirt brands. And the brand has made lots of adblogs this week and last with this cool retro video of a car jumping rope:



But the company behind the Penguin brand, Munsingwear, doesn't have quite as awesome a history as they let on.

For one thing, it made its name as an underwear company. For another, it made hilariously unitentional homoerotic ads like this:

Via Flikr

It also perpetrated fashion crimes against humanity, like this:

And more homoeroticism...

All Via

And... ummm...

Via eBay

Happy weekend, everyone.

F'd Ad Fridays: Brought to you by the people against teen sex

Ah, the virgin/whore conundrum. Where would American culture be without it?

Candies, the people who brought you Bristol Palin's awful "don't get teen preggers like me!" ad would like you to know that teenage sex is bad mmm'kay? But having a former Disney teen star (known for her full-frontal sexting shenanigans) strip down to her gitch to sell underwear is just peachy keen.



(Flash only, sorry)

Well isn't that special?