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Couth in Advertising
| Article
# : |
19705 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1991 |
3,211 Words |
| Author
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Steve Salerno
Steve Salerno's book on selling is called The Newest
Profession. He is contributing editor at California Business
magazine and has written for Harper's and the New Republic. A
movie based on his book Deadly Blessing was recently produced
for ABC by Warner Bros. |
In 1986, the makers of Perry Ellis cologne decided, upon full and sober reflection, that their company's image needs would best be served by crossing that fine line between hipness and vulgarity. Acting on the advice of its advertising agency, Della Femina Travisano & Partners, the Ellis brain trust promoted its popular male fragrance through a full-page ad in which a handsome but disaffected young model ruminated about telling his boss to go f--- himself. ... Right there in print. House standards caused a few magazines to run the expletive in the bowdlerized "f--" configuration, and others to reject the ad outright. But the unexpurgated version did find its way into several "sophisticate" slicks, among them New York and Vanity Fair. Eventually the ad was pulled, although as I recall, an Ellis spokesperson laughed off the notion that the withdrawal was based on anything as silly as common decency.
Exactly why the Ellis people chose their controversial motif in the first place remains uncertain. Perhaps it had to do with the hypercompetitiveness of the perfume marketplace; with slogans for new scents as ubiquitous in the air as the scents themselves, Ellis publicists may have hoped for a campaign that was capable of generating some free secondhand publicity. And in that respect it succeeded: Essays were written, angry phone calls were made, debates ensued about the limits and responsibilities of what passes for creativity.
I mention the Ellis fiasco because armchair critics of Madison Avenue tend to point to it as a dubious milestone of sorts--the place where it all went wrong. However, the Ellis company's descent into the scatology zone was not the revolutionary act it seemed to many at the time; it was merely a loud shot in a revolution that already had been under way for some time and would continue--gaining in momentum, surviving the transient brouhaha over the Ellis business. And indeed, in a medium now fraught with implications of pedophilia, bestiality, and every bizarre permutation of lovemaking, the mere use of the "F" word seems almost tame.
Something about advertising changed over the past decade or so. While the history of sex in marketing is long, the slant on sex--the nuances, the implications, the overtones--has lately grown harder and unhealthier. Seamier. I recall vividly an ad in a 1983 issue of New York. It appeared courtesy of the makers of Guess jeans and depicted an uncaptioned encounter between two ingénues of lush looks and lusty bosom; they wore gingham clothing that was ripped or left strategically askew in certain places. Set on a Midwestern farm or some such, the vaguely Hustleresque
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