Writing on Make the Logo Bigger, Bill Green questions Crispin Porter Bogusky's use of sexual harassment in the office place as the focal point of one of its commercials for Haggar. Because the spot focuses on male sexual harassment, it's perfectly fine to turn it into one big joke. Watch the spot. Now watch it again but imagine the men as women and the women as men. Would that approach be acceptable? Would it pass the PC test? We think not.
Yea, yea. We know. It's a joke. We get it. But consider this. Why is it OK to joke about male sexual harassment while, at the same time, it's not OK to joke about female sexual harassment?
Any campaign with the headline, "Your Girl's Gonna Get Wet," is bound to cause a bit of attention and make one think, "Hmm, I better be there for that," which is why the payoff to the headline is "Make Sure You're There Too." OK, then. We will be there. If only we knew where "there" was.
Ah, yes, the glorious teaser ad. While the association of girl, wet and tease together is oh so witty, the visual in the teaser get's one's mind out of the gutter in time to realize it's probably an ad for some water park. You decide. The posters are placed around a mall in Toronto.
If you haven't watched HBO's Big Love, you really should. It doesn't matter that the show's about a polygamist family focusing on a guy with three wives and three houses and they're battle to "fit in" while navigating the difficult restrictions "their own kind" place upon them. What matters is the show's keen ability to make other lifestyles seem as normal and everyday as your own. Aligning perfectly with that notion or normality is this campaign from Seattle-based Creature which spoofs fragrance and Viagra ads in a way that makes the lifestyle seem normal while also poking fun at it.
The spots (here and here) have been released on YouTube and fake ads have been placed on the HBO Big Love site. Spoof-like print ads are also part of the campaign and will be placed in sections relevant to the individual ad's focus.
Squarely Placing the VW Passat alongside the Chevrolet Corvette as badge of the mid-life crisis, TribalDDB UK has launched Mid-Life Crisis Retreat, a site built specifically for 40 and 50 year old men who think they've still got game and believe tighter clothing, among other horrific things, makes them equally as hot as a 25 year old underwear model. The video-heavy site offers up test to determine just how badly one has fallen into the mode of mid-lfe crisis. And, of course, you can send the test to a friend so they, too, can wallow in the self pity that is the mid-life crisis. This is some really uplifting stuff here, folks.
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