Orangina's beastly ad shakes up UK

Noah never saw this coming. Orangina's hyper-sexed ad, featuring animals lap-dancing until juice explodes, is drawing protests in the UK now. Parents say it's a kids' drink so how could owner Dr Pepper Snapple Group think this is appropri...

Oh, wait. Got us again. This is yet another example of dual-standards advertising, in which a company seeking online buzz pushes too far in the mass media, then protests -- what? offensive? we're sorry! -- while the blogosphere latches on and amplifies the message. This approach seems especially effective for brands trying to reposition themselves to the teen/young adult market, most likely to send the message viral.

Don't believe us? The Orangina ad ran in France in 2007 and quickly was scorned by Adweek as a freakiest ad of the year. Now, eight months later, it's rolled out in stalwart England?

Recent players in this whoops-don't-watch-but-please-pass-along space include Calvin Klein, Burger King, JC Penney, and Miley Cyrus. Though no one beats Cadbury back in 1969.

Sexuality and death: What to expect this fall shopping season

So you're going about your way and an ad with sexy wrestling women catches your eye. Why?

Psychologist Carl Jung suggested that humans seek fulfillment across several common stages of life -- courtship, parenting, preparing for death. The world is confusing along the way, so we fall back subconsciously onto "archetypes" -- deep-rooted themes that help us understand the information around us. There are event archetypes, such as birth and death; role archetypes, such as father, child, hero, trickster; and broader themes such as the Apocalypse.

Which brings us to sex and violence. The reason so much advertising titillates is more than lust (most women consumers won't long after the models in the above ad) or fear (we get that the fighting is staged). Instead, images of courtship/sex/mating/death resonate with the most compelling archetypes in our psychology. If you think honestly about your own life, the most powerful memories you retain belong to the first heavy date, the conception of a child, the first time you felt the vertigo of love, the phone call telling you your dad has died.

If sex is more than an itch, but instead signals archetypes tied to survival, then sensuality provokes response. If death is our inevitable end game, then violence resonates deeply.

All of which explains why women in this French Connection spot try to kill and kiss each other.

Via Yves Van Landeghem.

The obscenity of Eva Mendes' breast

Ever wonder why some TV commercials get banned?

Calvin Klein's new spot shows actress Eva Mendes fuzzy in a black-and-white composition, rather artsy until for a split second her arm moves revealing the tip of her breast. U.S. TV networks banned the ad and refused to accept even a recut version.

The real deal is poor ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox (as well as mid-tier cable networks) are caught between FCC broadcast rules representing the moral safety of the American public and what Americans really want. Consumers are fleeing broadcast in droves to watch racy videos on YouTube and online nudity, yet TV broadcasters face huge fines if they cross the line.

(Complaints to the FCC are up. Back in 2001, there were only 346 complaints all year; in the first half of 2006, U.S. consumers shrieked 327,198 times.)

The irony is the FCC rules do, by definition, allow naked flesh. From 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. -- hours when children might watch -- nudity, profanity, and obscenity are banned. But after 10, TV broadcasters have a safe harbor period in which they could conceivably broadcast full frontal nudity or the F-bomb.

But there is a catch. The FCC provides no safe harbor for "obscenity," and that is defined as any material that an average American might find has a tendency to excite lustful thoughts. So you see, America, it's not the nudity that keeps Eva off your television. It's the naughty way your mind might react.

Via Steve Hall.

Daddy, why is Burger King abusing that onion?

On July 6 Paul Williams grabbed food at an airport and noticed something surreal about the Burger King paper tray liner. A pickle is putting on a rubber glove to examine an onion, whose pants are pulled down.

Nice. This bizarro-promotion comes from .start in Munich, and includes cartoon illustrations of topless carrots (on "PlayVeg" magazine in the above graphic), sailors headed for peep shows in a "vegsexy, hot and spicy" red light district, and our personal favorite, tomatoes being slaughtered for ketchup on Halloween.

Now that's branding. Via Brand Autopsy.

Time to satisfy a hungry woman

This holiday weekend think about sex, food and shelter. We know you will, because Angela Natividad points out today's advertisements have not really migrated far from the sexist assumptions of the 1950s. Women's magazines, for example, remain filled with food ads showing women how to cut meat, bake pies and sneak snacks -- especially if their husbands leave them unsatisfied.

Which makes us wonder: In an efficient marketplace, advertisers will choose messages that generate the highest response. The women and men who respond to food and sex messaging are thus, well, responding in quantities high enough to keep this stuff coming. So do we still fall into the same old homemaker / sex-seeker roles?

In the millions of years of human evolution, the Western culture shifts of the 1960s to 2000s are a small aberration. Beneath our new, open, fair-minded facades, maybe we still want the same thing. Something hot from the kitchen.

Well, at least he drives a Prius

This spring a series of fake Prius ads began flooding the web, showing naughty drivers dumping bodies or making out with daughters or picking up prostitutes. We hear art director David Krulik had something to do with it.

But we wonder, are all these "fake" ads really so fake? Toyota is no stranger to edgy; its Scion brand, with help from ATTIK, launched the creepy Little Deviants campaign last year in which X-faced demons lopped the heads off sheep people. Creative director Simon Needham was quoted as saying the spots were "bound to entertain." Silly us. Our kids saw it before bedtime and thought it was people killing each other.

There is a growing undercurrent of rule-breaking in advertising in which ads with sex, nudity, violence or shocking material are released, but somehow absolved from any formal affiliation with the product. J.C. Penney's stripping teens come to mind. Are advertisers really not behind this? Or are people pulling strings behind the scenes to get a second standard of risqué messaging out, certain to get noticed?

And advertisers: If you aren't involved, wake up. This new fake channel seems to work.

Tx David Griner for the catch; the demon-lop-headed campaign was for Scion, of course, and not Prius. We corrected it above.

Now buy a house and get a blonde, too

Really, we can't make this up. Deven Trabosh of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., is selling her house for $340,000 on eBay -- and if you pay an additional $500,000 "shipping fee," you get her too.

She tells the AP that it's all combining her hopes of selling a home and finding a mate. 500 guys, including an Italian wine taster, have expressed interest in the pay-for-marriage deal.

Which shows that (a) the internet is the perfect sorter for supply and demand, and (b) the world's oldest profession always has new twists.

Elvis teaches you the instant response

Our last few posts have featured unclothed women and erogenous fuzzy peaches, so in the spirit of fair play we now show you a young Elvis in tight leather.

Here's the point: Watch this crowd in the first instant that Joseph Hall walks on stage. They don't know if this Elvis impersonator is good, if he can dance, if he sings or screeches. But in that split second, you can feel the crowd make a flash judgment -- and tip toward a response.

Advertising is just like this. Most ad messages are developed laboriously by research, focus groups, past campaign analysis, creatives, math types with offers, and media planning. But it all must work in that first heartbeat. There is a miniscule flashpoint in which consumers decide yea or nay, move past this or digest it, turn the page or consider a response.

You have to catch the consumer in that instant. The message has to be simple and focused. The impression has to tip.

Sort of like a guy in black leather.

The truth about sexual obsession

About six years ago we got on a plane bound from Washington, D.C., to New York and settled in to a blue US Airways seat next to a consulting buddy. Our friend, Ed, tapped us on the elbow. “Look at that,” he said. We moved our eyes up slowly, a bit embarrassed that Ed was checking out a blonde, and then we realized the blonde he was checking was U.S. talk show host Katie Couric.

Katie looked pretty good. At least the back of her head did, which is all we caught as she slid into a front-row airline seat. Her hair had some sort of multifaceted, shimmering gleam, as if a dozen hair stylists had worked different layers of gold through it all at once.

Katie’s hair looked expensive.

She moved on to the evening news, where great ratings didn’t happen, and as the years passed we realized (a) we would never date Katie, because we were already married, and (b) a huge latent sexism exists in society if Katie couldn’t pull good ratings because the American public judges her on hair color and not smart journalism skills. In the end, guys on planes admired young hair, and people eating dinner wanted TV news from old men.

If the fact that we’re calling her “Katie” bothers you, congrats, you’re feeling the deep-rooted emotion of sexual response on some level -- an innate characteristic that humans all spend time trying to repress, or trying to stimulate, all while denying we are animals at heart. This thought occurs after a week in which national advertisers like J.C. Penney and Heinz caught flack for running/repudiating ads that showed teenagers stripping for sex and men kissing over kitchen counters. The sex-in-advertising thing that causes so much reaction is rooted in our hormonal foundation. To fight sexual prejudice -- the pre-judging of people based on their biological features -- is to battle a million years of evolution. Humans didn't survive without mating, so looking for mates is in our blood.

Today a friend we made on Twitter wrote,

"My sis just said that the hiring person for a job she applied to was concerned that the size of her breasts would be a 'distraction.' Srsly."

Whoa. We re-read it, and thought the appropriate response is to feel concerned for her sister. But of course, we also wondered about her sister's appearance.

And finally, we thought –- how clever. That writer on Twitter just boosted her own ratings by stimulating a response.

Photo: Fatman. (Hey, it's just a peach.)

J.C. Penney, you don't have to put on that red dress

Yes, it's whoops-we-really-didn't-mean-this-sexually-charged ad week. Now J.C. Penney sniffs it is outraged, outraged! that agency Saatchi may have somehow, on its own, created this spot and released it on YouTube without authorization. And somehow the unauthorized spot slipped into the 2008 International Advertising Festival at Cannes. And won an award.

J.C. Penney tells WSJ that the ad may have been filmed after hours by a producer who worked on regular Penney spots. You know ... with a full production crew, orchestrated lighting and professional teen actors.

We're going to have to start building a new line item into media plans, called Whoops Sorry About That Scandal But Hey Thanks for the PR. Via Steve Hall.

Update: Had to relink to a UK version of the video, it got pulled from YouTube. Oh, the denial continues!

Back in 1969, chocolate ads were so subtle

We hear Hershey is about to increase ad spending to fight Mars-Wrigley in the new candy wars. Hershey has devised a plan with sophisticated customer segmentation, aligning chocolate products with consumers who fit the profile of "loyal indulgers" or "engaged exploring munchers."

But nothing gets noticed like this.

The (gasp!) sexiness of Miley Cyrus

So young Miley Cyrus rises to fame on Hannah Montana, gets her pop country singer Billy Ray a job on the set, becomes a cash cow for Disney, poses almost topless on a Vanity Fair cover, and now this week at age 15 gets castigated on blogs for looking a little too provocative with a milk mustache. (Ad blogger Steve Hall deconstructs America's can-you-believe-it-but-let's-look-closer obsession here.)

Sex works in advertising because it is an irrepressible part of our response mechanisms, and one that may be the most easy visual. (By comparison, it's really hard to communicate the scent of fresh-roasted meat in magazine or TV creative.) Societal mores aside, the human physiology is ready to reproduce around age 13, and young teenagers respond to any whiff of hormones. The very fact that there is a lower limit to what society approves of in sex, officially, means the people who want to get a response are going to step slightly across that line.

Marketers behind such Miley "scandals" may stage these events because they know there is a difference between what people say they don't like and what they respond to. The same parents and teens upset that a glowing Disney star would look so provocative are chasing her all over the internet and buying all her DVDs and MP3s.

In a way, the Miley scandals are a bit like a gruesome highway accident, that thing on the side of the road that reminds you of your own physical rawness, forcing you to slow down and look even if you really don't approve of the bodily concept. Sex and fear, anger and shock heighten impressions and extend recall. We're not suggesting that snapping photos of a 15-year-old girl in a sheet is right. We're just saying that major entertainment companies who pose teenage girls in tight tank tops with milk drizzling from their lips know exactly what they're doing.

Drinking in the stimulus response

What prior experiences were Nestea and Coke referring to in these ads?

B.F. Skinner wrote that motivation has three requirements: A preceding thing or event that will provoke a reaction; the reaction itself; and a reinforcing or punishing consequence. People's likelihood to respond is tied to a formula that includes the magnitude of the stimulus -- say, someone waves chocolate in front of your nose -- the context of the stimulus -- say, are you really hungry? -- and the rate of prior reinforcement -- say, you've eaten chocolate before and you LOVE it. Because people, like dogs, associate the stimulus with the prior pleasure they received from a similar, earlier interaction, we salivate when we smell food.

This is important for marketers, because consumers have stimuli other than your own message. You can't just build a concept by looking internally; you have to consider the exterior factors hitting your prospects as well. For example, a gasoline station with great customer service could focus ads on friendly staff, but consumers facing $4.00-a-gallon gas today just may not care. You provide service; they're worried about price. Understanding all stimuli can help you refine the message.

In advertising, messages that reinforce prior rewards and mitigate past pain are most likely to stimulate response.

Photo via New Shelton.

The artful suspense of Gillette's kiss

Sure, it may look like sex in advertising when Gillette promotes razors by showing a curvaceous British woman in an unbuttoned blouse and exposed bra talking about how to kiss.

But look again. This is really a case study in suspense.

In an age of ADHD, where consumers quickly scan content before clicking away, Gillette's new microsite uses tension to keep viewers aboard -- and to make an enduring impression. Tension, or suspense, is the communicative act of making the reader want more. Tension is why Stephen King novels are so readable, and why those first Sony Bravia TV colored-balls ads worked (and why the new foam spots don't). In your own advertising, ask yourself -- what are we doing (beyond sex, of course) to make viewers stay tuned? What could we do to tease and entice and make our brand imprint sink in?

Young men in their 20s and 30s may hope for more to be revealed in Gillette's web tease. Stick around, guys, but only if you shave.

Barry Obama: Welcome back, biased journalism

One of the most exciting media trends of the past few years has been the return of the hack. You know, biased journalists: Fox News slamming liberals; Newsweek misleading readers that Barack's real name is Barry; Harper's magazine calling John McCain a hypocrite on its cover (just out in print, web link not available). You can almost feel the testosterone heat surging among editors who, emboldened by blog blather and retreating readers, say, hey, we have opinions too!

This is big change because not so long ago journalists were pure of heart. Saints. For a brief period of time, say 1935-2000, Western reporters took oaths in an altruistic calling -- a Switzerland amid a commercial world at war, casting news from the mountaintops about truth and justice, and keeping their hands clean. Heaven forbid opinion crept in, or worse, someone tried to buy it. Money? Gifts? Lunch? Please, we don't touch that. Talk to the clerks in ad sales.

The height of such altruism was Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose feverish reporting of Watergate in the 1970s ticked off Nixon loyalists but was more about truth than liberalism. Read All the President's Men and you get the vibe of two guys simply trying to solve a puzzle, because the truth was out there. If the break-in had been orchestrated by Martin Luther King Jr. or the Pope, you sense Woodward and Bernstein would have dug all the harder to get that scoop.

Ah, but that's all over. One million blogs filled with internet flames have caught the attention of the reading public, and newspapers and cable networks are tripping over themselves to share a little venom, too. Which is simply a return to reporting's roots.

Journalism began as a sordid business, back in Renaissance Europe with handwritten newsletters slamming political foes or reporting ghastly deeds. The legend of Count Dracula started with hacks documenting the grisly acts of Vlad Tsepes Drakul, perhaps with embellishments to protect German interests. Jonathan Swift of Gulliver's Travels fame wrote a little piece skewering the prejudices of the English, coyly suggesting all those pesky Irish troubles could be solved if the Brits just ate Irish babies.

Passion makes for good copy. So the hell with church and state. If we all wanted pure news, we'd still be reading newspapers -- and odds are, we don't. We want sex, violence, and a point of view that amplifies our own. Admit it and embrace it: The gloves are off journalism, baby, so may the best slander win.

Adverse impact: Why Victoria's Secret is covering up

It's hard to believe but, yes, Victoria's Secret had a shy beginning. Back in the 1970s, Stanford grad Roy Raymond went shopping for his wife and got embarrassed by racks of panties, so he borrowed $80,000 and founded a store. Subtle. Wood paneled. Where lacy things hung on the wall in frames. Raymond's great insight was that men buy a lot of underwear for women, but these same men often cringe when seeing rows of empty bras.

The first VS catalogs even showed both men and women on the cover, usually a guy in a tux and the woman in a flowing robe. Sex tonight? No, hon, just dinner.


And then the 1990s and 2000s gave America bottomless Esquire covers and diamond-encrusted bras. VS pushed far into the red zone, the American Decency Council protested, and suddenly with sales down 6%, last week CEO Sharen Turney relented -- VS is going to tone down the sex. Some like Brandflakes point out Victoria's Secret brand slipped a demo, and is now more popular among college students than affluent homeowners.

We think VS fell into the trap of adverse impact.

Adverse impact is totally logical, but something most marketers fail to think about. It simply means that your marketing message may repulse a certain portion of prospective customers. Stop & Shop recently sent homes in Connecticut a mailer saying "thanks for being one of our best customers"; our first thought when seeing it was, damn, we're spending too much on groceries. For every marketing action there is an equal and opposite reaction.


VS is a $5 billion business and has cataloging down to a science. Like most marketers, they probably focus on responses and not aversion. They know catalog response rates, that customer lifetime value is about $450 in future sales, that the optimal number of mailers is 7 to get you to react, and that the black lace on the cover with a red star burst drives a 2.8% response vs. the 2.3% last time they used white. (We're guessing, but we'll go with black.) But what VS and others fail to measure is the percentage of consumers who throw the catalog in the trash because they don't like the message. The adverse impact is simple: Some women may be repulsed by overwrought sexuality, and if those women outnumber respondents, VS begins to have troubles.

There are three ways to avoid the adverse impact trap:

1. Anticipate it. This means setting up a qualitative study to monitor your entire prospect base -- which typically includes respondents, "apathetics," and the repulsed. While ideally your respondents grow, and most people fall in the apathetic middle, sometimes the anti-message repulsed folks begin to swell. VS could have seen this coming with the simple aging of Baby Boomers; as more women move further away from size 2, pencil-thin models may lose their relevance and become annoying.

2. Mass customize. If you are big and must appeal to masses -- VS sells about half of all lacy things in the United States -- then for Pete's sake, don't pitch everyone the same way. Victoria's product line already provides the basis for customization; Pink for teens and 20somethings, Biofit for women in their 40s, thongs for (admit it) young married men. VS should migrate catalogs to a mass customized platform, using variable printing to put the right cover image in front of the right demo target.

3. Do both! Go crazy and ask your prospects how you could improve the message, and then respond with a customized solution. Have you ever asked customers for feedback on your direct mail, print ad, or web site? What about prospects? How cool would it be to launch a survey with every campaign flight asking unknown, non-customers what they think, what might offend them, and how the message could be made better.

Yes, Victoria, this is radical. But when asking people to consider sex, you must be prepared for different reactions.

(Nice profile of VS founder Roy Raymond here.)

Elave's full frontal path to viral marketing

So the silly Brits at Elave have launched a risqué online video that has, um, full frontal nudity. (Be careful. We warned you.) Elave is a real company, selling ointments to help people with eczema and dermatitis, yet went out on a limb with a spot showing actors who look like medical professionals ... who just happen to work in a really, really warm lab. What up?

Despite the hoopla, advertisers simply can't control viral marketing -- it's very hard to get an idea to spread through the public -- but there are two basic approaches. Malcolm Gladwell focuses on the channel; the hyperconnected people who make ideas spread. Seth Godin focuses on the idea itself; how content must be made so catchy that it turns from a "sneeze" into an "ideavirus," scaling like the flu everywhere.

The Elave spot is an attempt to create just such an ideavirus. This little snippet of flesh (OK, a lot of flesh) would never pass S&P at major cable networks, but that's the point. Traditional TV is irrelevant, the Elave spot was launched online and it is so crazily different it surely will get passed around.

We see three dangers with this type of aggressive attempt. (1) You may generate attention but not get response, especially if the attention is just young men looking at models. (2) Shock will fade. Eventually, this type of thing will no longer startle. (See: HBO ratings.)

And (3), beware the adverse impact. A large portion of potential customers, say women in their 30s and 40s, may not want to be exposed to this. Perhaps, eventually, online video ads will have to work the old-fashioned way -- by offering something meaningful that people want to buy.

The boinking sound you hear is a mallet

OK, three posts on sex in advertising in one day. Enough. But we must leave you with Andy's bit on vintage album covers. Apparently the target demo for music in the 1950s was M35-54 who stashed naughty records in the attic next to Playboy.

Spanking the wifey: And you thought Starbucks knew marketing

While we're talking about sex in advertising ... geez. At least we've come further than this.

Farrah Fawcett and cream: Why sex in advertising works

Why would any brand with half a brain promote Farrah Fawcett creaming someone? Daniel Pouzzner suggests that evolutionary forces drive humans, especially men, to think about sex almost constantly. First, procreation is difficult. Women are able to conceive for just 24 hours each month, and the actual timing of the window is not visible, so men are more likely to create offspring if they attempt sex more frequently. Second, human sperm has very poor quality compared to other animals, and so numerous sexual encounters are required for humans to reproduce. Sexy ads exist because our cave ancestors were swingers.

Ah, but the money quote is this, where Pouzzner points out that men aggressively respond to stimuli because they are expendable:

Because the loss of a few males - even quite a few - often results in no significant reduction in the number of the next generation, and because for a male the procreative dividend of heroic excellence tends to be immense, on average males exhibit less strategic conservatism than females.

Evolutionarily men can die off in droves and women will do fine without them. So men have no incentive not to take huge risks, whether chasing tigers with spears or potential mates who may reject them. In the deep coding in human genes, there is instinct to forge ahead and not think logically about the outcome.

Which helps explain Old Milwaukee ads like this.