F'd Ad Fridays: Effing Student Work

Redditor Jo3 posted some of his student work:

My advice to you, Jo3: There's enough commoditization of women's sexuality out there already, and it doesn't help to compare their vaginas to hot pockets. You are a clever creative with bold ideas. You can do much better than this.

Christina Hendricks celebrates Christmas with a product placement

I assume it's a "double"

According to Celebuzz: "Christina Hendricks celebrates with Johnnie Walker at her annual holiday party at a private residence on December 10, 2011 in Los Angeles, California."

No subtlety here. But it's also the perfect storm of booze, boobs and branding.

Buzzfeeder Gavon Laessig said, "It's as though two examples of perfection were dropped into the Large Hadron Collider and smooshed into one giant wad of perfection. We've discovered the Higgs Bosom. Why, yes, Christina Hendricks…I would love some scotch."

Me, I just can't wait for Mad Men to come back. But perhaps a stiff drink would get me through...

More pics here.

That's one powerful bra!

Marc shared a post from Adformatie, which showed this bus shelter campaign for push-up bras from HEMA, a Dutch retail chain:

Those of you who are very familiar with the weird and wild world of fashion are now exclaiming, "That's a man, man!!!"

And it is. Andrej Pejić is the androgynous European model of the moment.

Source

So, you see, the bra's so good, it made you ogle a dude's moob cleavage.


Credits:
Agency: Doom & Dickson
Concept: John de Vries, Rene Verbong
Art director: John de Vries
Account: Frieda Ulsamer de Waard, Karin van Dalen
Photographer: Wendelien Daan, Unit
Client: Rosa Arents, Caroline Turennout (HEMA)

Thanks to AdFreak and Copyranter for the linkbacks.

At the American Apparel XXXmas party

The staff at the LA factory and head office apparently got drunk, disrobed, and modelled some awful Christmas sweaters.

So, you know, it was a lot like an ad agency party.

Source: Facebook

"Wider, stiffer, longer lasting"

Skateboard advertising is neither subtle, nor ironic. It is just straight-on adolescent male masturbation material:



Via Illegal Advertising

More hysterical censorship from the UK

Source

This transit ad, from the UK's Marks & Spencer chain, has been banned by the kingdom's ad regulator for being too sexy.

From their ruling:

"We noted the complainants’ concerns that this ad, displayed on buses, was likely to be seen by children. We considered that most children viewing the ad would understand that the poster was advertising lingerie and, as such, the models would not be fully clothed. We considered that the pose of the woman lying on the bed was only mildly sexual in nature, and as a result was unlikely to be seen as unsuitable to be seen by children. However, we considered that the pose of the woman kneeling on the bed was overtly sexual, as her legs were wide apart, her back arched and one arm above her head with the other touching her thigh. We also noted that the woman in this image wore stockings. We considered that the image was of an overtly sexual nature and was therefore unsuitable for untargeted outdoor display, as it was likely to be seen by children. We concluded that the ad was socially irresponsible."

If you read this blog, you know my stand on this. Using sex to sell everything is just lazy. Objectifying women in ads is insulting. But those are my opinions, not things I want regulated.

I honestly believe that we, as consumers, need to decide for ourselves what we are willing to tolerate from advertisers. Sexual exploitation of women in ads is so commonplace, in ads aimed at both men and women, that I'm surprised it has any breakthrough potential at all anymore. My 7-year-old son, just last weekend, was stopped in his tracks by a larger-than-life POP poster at Sears showing a woman in see through underwear. But that stopping power wears off. (In his case, he just blurted out "booby covers!" and laughed.)

You can choose to complain to a business about their ads. Or you can choose to not do business with them. You can choose to complain to the owner of the media. But this knee-jerk banning that's happening with the ASA in the UK really seems over the top to me. Plus, it only works into the offending advertisers hands by giving people a reason to take notice of their ads.

Generally, in social marketing, we feel that it's more effective to recognize and reinforce good behaviour than punish and shame bad. Imagine if organizations like the ASA put more of their efforts into celebrating the advertisers who are "socially responsible",  giving them the free PR while the naughty ones languished in the oversaturated sexy soup of the ad landscape. Wouldn't that be nice?

Via The Drum and The Telegraph

Luck is an attitude... a very Italian attitude

It's a cute ad, part of the new "Luck is an Attitude" campaign to push Martini on a younger generation. The aggressively flirtatious nature of Italian culture may rub some the wrong way, but it's actually pretty common there. I like the way Gianni keeps re-syching with his more passive self so that the day never really diverges except in sexiness and fun. And the vintage Italian film style and music certainly fit the brand.



What do you think?

Via Buzzfeed

F'd Ad Fridays: Just walk away from this one

Seriously. Just do it.



Thanks to Scott for the link.

F'd Ad Fridays: Underwear models show off their intellect

This video Christmas card from Victoria's Secret isn't doing any favours for the dignity of the modelling trade.



What a bunch of boobs.

Via Illegal Advertising

Now there's an Axe ad that gets straight to the point

If you can't laugh at yourself, you lose at life. I'm glad to see some of the Axe marketers doing something stupid and lighthearted.

Via the Portuguese Axe Facebook page. Thanks to Armando for sharing.

"Degrading" Lynx ads banned in UK

According to Adfreak, a series of online ads for Lynx (Axe) deodorant have been banned by the UK's ad authority for implying that "using the advertised product would lead to more uninhibited sexual behaviour" and concluded, "we therefore considered that the poster would be seen to make a link between purchasing the product and sex with women and in so doing would be seen to objectify women."

While I find the ads juvenile and tasteless, I'm not sure I buy the ASA definition of how women are objectified in the ads. For example, in the ad above there is no doubt in my mind that the model, Lucy Pinder, is being sexually objectified. But I don't think it's Lynx's laughable claim that it will get you laid by ladmag models that does it. It's the way the model presents her T&A to the camera with a porno stare, with the joke about premature ejaculation. (Which I find pretty funny, given the youthful target market.)

I'm sure anti-rape groups will also be outraged at the implication that it's okay for a man to "lose control" when he sees a woman sexualized like this. But in context of the other ads in the campaign, the pun is made more clear:

I just find the ads irresponsible and degrading to their young male masturbathlete target market as they are to the model (who is at least getting paid). But I still think banning them is the wrong idea. Better to just expose this crap for what it is — lazy, sexist advertising.

F'd Ad Fridays: Now with more Jordache than you can shake your ass at

I don't know if any of the rest of you clicked on the 1980 Jordache jeans spot that popped up as a reco after playing their '70s ad embedded in a previous post. I just now did:



Jordache was know in the '70s for being focussed on how tight they were on the bum.

Which is fine with adults. But translating the slogan and the ass shots to a classroom full of kids? And their teacher?

Times sure have changed. Although in the interest of full disclosure, I had myself a pair of those things on my prepubescent butt within a year after this ad was made.

Have a great weekend, all.

F'd Ad Fridays: Now even treehugger cars are being sold as sex

This has to be a joke. According to Green Car Reports, a group calling itself Pump Rebels have decided that it's time to sex-up fuel efficiency.

According to their site,

"Sports cars aren't the only sheet metal who deserve sexy calendars. Horsepower is old news. Big MPGs are what it's all about. Despite the cliché images of daisies, leaves, and fluffy clouds—fuel efficiency is badass, and long overdue for an attitude update. 

$1 from every calendar sold will go to the Blue Green Alliance. BGA is a non-profit dedicated to expanding the green economy, jobs, alternative energy, and mass transit."

Women as cars. Cars as women. Objects of desire. I've ranted about this once already today, so I'll let it go at that.

The calendar is available online for $17.99.

Shamed be he who thinks evil of it?

Yes, I cover a lot of fashion advertising and marketing here. Because it's so sexually-charged, attention-hungry and pretentious, it usually provides interesting fodder.

Take this campaign from The Lake & Stars:

The anonymous models are mother and daughter. The younger one is 19. And the fashion brand has been accused of promoting incest with this pictorial.

Maayan Zilberman, co-owner of the New York-based lingerie and swimwear label, described it this way:

"...for our viewer to see these photographs, you're confronted with this feeling of 'who's the sexy one?' Because there's always someone who's sexier and there's always some kind of competition going on; there's always a tenderness going on; there's always a tension," she said. 

"We're opening it up to think about: Is it OK for a mother and daughter to feel tender toward each other? And what happens when they're in sexy clothing?"

Which is actually the creepiest thing about the pictures — the way she describes them. That aside, you can see these pictures in many ways: as a non-sexual intimacy between a mother and a daughter, as two stages of womanly beauty presenting themselves in a sexual context to titillate you, or as OMG HOT LESBIAN COUGAR INCEST NYMPHOS.

I really think it's up to where your mind is at in the first place. Where's yours?

Killer jeans

As we get more and more saturated with sex and violence — both real and online — we apparently become harder to shock. So this long ad/short film for Australia's Billycock Denim & Co tries to lure us in with highly-sexualized psychopathy.



It's all very stylized and pretty average for the fashion industry. But will there come a point at which consumers won't want their denim brand associations to be about necrophilia and mass murder?

Dead sexy. (Ewwwwww!)

Via Illegal Advertising

Fashion ad celebrates lazy Sunday morning sex

Lots of nudity and sex in the adosphere today. This tribute to morning horning is for fashion/design studio Surface to Air. For what it is, the video is remarkably tasteful, if still focussed on the idealized female form. Beautifully shot and provocative, but it would have been better if they had kept teasing and stopped short of the fashion tit.



Via Illegal Advertising

Many snakes were harmed in the making of this fashion spread

Apparently snakeskin is a thing in fashion this year. I'm not morally opposed to the wearing of animal skin, but I find this spread by Giampaolo Sgura in Antidote unsetting. The wild harvest of pythons just for their skins seems wasteful and irresponsible to me. And naked Ashley Smith letting a live one slither over her sultry nude form as she wears the hides of its brethren is also a little ick.

Via Animal NY, where you can see the rest of the pics.

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

American Apparel shoe ads take all the joy out of sex

Dominated, humiliated, detached, impersonal... I guess some people are in to those kinds of things in the bedroom. But these ads (via Ads of The World)
don't feel sexy at all. They just feel wrong.

Shoe fetish, or ass kicking?

Reminds me of Puma, except it's a real ad.

"The shoes are doen here!"

Note that she is always there as "his" plaything.

Yeah, yeah. I know. By talking about how awful these ads are, I become part of the problem. But I really do believe there's such a thing as bad publicity. We need to talk about what we like and what we don't like so that, as consumers, we have a more informed relationship with the brand.

No! Lola! — Marc Jacobs ad banned in the UK

Adweek reports that the controversial campaign for Marc Jacobs' Oh! Lola!, starring 17-year-old American actress Dakota Fanning, was banned by the ASA.

From the ruling:

"The ASA understood that the ad had appeared in publications with a target readership of those over 25 years of age.  We noted that the model was wearing a thigh length soft pink, polka dot dress and that part of her right thigh was visible.  We noted that the model was holding up the perfume bottle which rested in her lap between her legs and we considered that its position was sexually provocative.  We understood the model was 17 years old but we considered she looked under the age of 16.  We considered that the length of her dress, her leg and position of the perfume bottle drew attention to her sexuality.  Because of that, along with her appearance, we considered the ad could be seen to sexualise a child.  We therefore concluded that the ad was irresponsible and was likely to cause serious offence."

I agree that the ad is irresponsible. But there is a big difference between being offended and wanting to censor. This is where I often find the British regulator crosses the line. According to its ruling, "four readers challenged whether the ad was offensive and irresponsible as it portrayed the young model in a sexualised manner." Four!

Way to go, ASA. The ad would have gone away soon, because it is only one of many of its type. But this ruling will only help Marc Jacobs and Coty, the perfume manufacturer, and for all the wrong reasons. The ad was sleazy, especially since it features an underage actress who—like Brooke Shields before her—has been the disturbing focus of ephebophilic interest since she was 12. (She also played many sexualized roles in movies and ads at a tender age.) Now that the ad is certified perverted, it will capture the interest of a whole new audience.