shots 159: X is for X-Rated
Under-18s look away. Six ads that outraged, aroused and revolted.
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X marks the spot in this section of our 25th anniversary retrospective. And there was a lot of choice when it came to campaigns that were, shall we say, rather economical with clothing and/or perceived good taste. Since advertising began there have been commercial messages which flirted with common decency. Danny Edwards takes a closer look
Some ads from decades past seem so outdated in their sexual politics that they beggar belief, such as these lines from the 50s for the Kenwood Chef food mixer, “[it] does everything but cook – that’s what wives are for” and for Drummond climbing sweaters, the rather bald, “Men are better than women.”
Other, more recent examples, such as Protein World’s now infamous ‘Beach Body Ready’ poster, show that while attitudes to women, and the way they are portrayed, may have changed in the succeeding decades, they are also, in many ways, still the same.
Outmoded sexual politics aside, some campaigns simply push boundaries to see what the censors, and indeed the public, might find acceptable. Wonderbra’s famously iconic ‘Hello Boys’ poster of supermodel Eva Herzigova might not seem too provocative now, but in 1994 it caused some furore as many thought it was degrading to women.
So, this list of six campaigns isn’t necessarily a collection of ads that were banned, though many were, but a reflection of how the industry has continually pushed the envelope of controversy and, whether planned or not, caused varying levels of outrage along the way.
Outpost.com Cannon
Back in 1999 the internet, or the world wide web as we seemed intent on saying back then, was a surging tidal wave of momentum. And, before the first dot-com crash washed over the globe, many online companies were attempting to make a splash. One such company was Outpost.com. Its campaign, created by Cliff Freeman and Partners NYC and aired during the Super Bowl of 1999, featured a distinguished looking gent in a Chesterfield armchair calmly explaining why they were about to fire gerbils from a cannon. “We want you to remember our name, Outpost.com. That’s why we’ve decided to fire gerbils out of this cannon through the ‘o’ in Outpost.” While the company stated that no actual gerbils were harmed in the making of the spot, gerbil-lovers everywhere were up in arms about the treatment of the furry little critters and the ad was pulled. If you can tell me what Outpost.com actually was, well, you’re a better man than me.
Yves Saint Laurent Opium
Sex sells. We all know that. Controversy also sells. Combine the two and what do you get? You get what, today, the industry would define as ‘earned media’. And this poster for a YSL perfume, featuring an alabaster-skinned, artfully naked Sophie Dahl reclining somewhat provocatively on velvet cloth, earned a lot of media. The 2000 ad saw the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority receive over 900 complaints, which it eventually upheld, saying, “We agreed with public complaints that a poster ad for Opium perfume featuring a naked Sophie Dahl was sexually suggestive and, in an untargeted medium, likely to cause serious or widespread offence.”
Wrigley’s Dog Breath
We’ve had gerbils being fired from a cannon, now we’ve got a dog being vomited from a man. Yes, you read that right. In 2003 this AMV BBDO London spot for Wrigley’s X-cite mints got people’s hackles (and dinner) up by showing a man, looking somewhat worse-for-wear the morning after the night before, realising he’s got very bad breath. Said man then retches, before vomming up a grubby-looking dog. The special effects are actually pretty impressive, even after 12 years, but many people thought the ad was, ironically, tasteless and also complained that it scared their kids. The powers that be agreed with them and promptly banned the spot.
Agent Provocateur
We’ve already established that sex sells, and if you’re talking X-rated content then Agent Provocateur knows what it’s doing. The brand has continually added controversy to its commercials almost as steadily as it’s taken away the clothing budget. Of course, they’re ads for lingerie, so there’s a certain amount of flesh to be expected but, you know…
The first AP spot to cause a stir, Proof, is from 2001 when diminutive Aussie songstress Kylie Minogue, dressed in high heels, bra, knickers and suspenders, rode a mechanical bull to the sound of The Hives’ Main Offender in a blood red, Twin Peaks-esque setting. Originally a cinema commercial, the ad went viral before viral was even a thing.
Since then we’ve had, in 2011, Mark Ronson’s then girlfriend, now wife, Josephine de la Baume, starring in a voyeuristic ‘leaked’ video which shows her relaxing in full AP get-up. As one does. In 2012 came probably the most unforgettable spot, Fleurs Du Mal, which is sort of a cross between a horror film and a porn flick, in which one pretty-much naked model is attacked by four other pretty-much naked models.
Then, in 2013, actress Penelope Cruz wrote and directed L’Agent, a film featuring the kind of party most teenage boys (and even the actor starring in the spot, for that matter) could only dream of.
Nando’s Last Dictator Standing
We’ve had nudity and perceived animal cruelty, but if you’re looking for some political controversy then one spot that definitely has extra hot flavouring is a 2011 ad for Nando’s. Called Last Dictator Standing, the film pokes fun at Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, who, played by a lookalike, reminisces about the fun times he had singing karaoke with Mao Tse-Tung, making sand angels with Saddam Hussein, riding tanks with Idi Amin and having water pistol fights with Colonel Gaddafi. All set to the sound of Mary Hopkin’s Those Were the Days. The spot was a big hit in South Africa, but Mugabe loyalists in Zimbabwe called for a boycott of the chicken chain and some threatened staff at Zimbabwean outlets. Eventually the spot was pulled.
Benetton
Italian fashion brand Benetton has a history of provocative advertising under its handmade, finest leather belt. In 1990, to raise awareness of AIDS, they used a famous image of AIDS sufferer and activist David Kirby on his deathbed, which caused a wave of controversy.
Renowned photographer Oliviero Toscani, who suggested the use of the David Kirby image, helped push the brand and its equality awareness-raising United Colors of Benetton campaign further into the public’s consciousness with challenging images such as the moment of birth of a baby girl, a black man and a white man handcuffed together and three human hearts lined up, with ‘white’, ‘black’ and ‘yellow’ printed over them to illustrate the lack of difference between each organ.
Most recently, in 2011, the company’s UNHATE initiative saw it create highly controversial – and highly Photoshopped – posters which showed famous world leaders kissing: Barack Obama kissing Chinese president Hu Jintao, French president Nicolas Sarkozy kissing German chancellor Angela Merkel and Pope Benedict XVI kissing Egyptian imam Ahmed el-Tayeb.
After widespread criticism, not least from the Vatican, the image of the Pope was pulled.
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