February 25, 2008

Admit it. You would, wouldn't you?

Chlamydia is officially the fourth most-popular girl's name in Basildon, a place where protected sex is interpreted as having a shag in a bus shelter. By sheer coincidence, the agency's junior postboy harks from that wonderful town.
The picture below also happens to be stuck on his office wall.
"It's cos she's a fit bird, and I would, you know," is his justification for displaying the image.
I decided to conduct some undisciplined, unscientific and entirely biased qualitative research (the sort that the publishers of the British Social Attitudes survey would be proud of) by asking a selection of males in the agency the simple question "What do you think of this?" while holding up the ad.
100% of 18-24 year olds (i.e. 3 out of 3) said "Phwooar, yes I would".
To the supplementary question "Even if you didn't have a condom?", each one looked at me as if I were insane and said words to the effect of "Fuck it yeah, you only live once."
The ad appears in virtually every lad mag. This one's scanned from Nuts, supposedly aimed at older teenagers and men in their twenties. Each issue should really come with a box of tissues, and not because of its romantic content.
Therein lies the problem. I suggest that a suggestively-posed hottie with accompanying sober copy simply won't work with that target demographic. Throw in some disease-related warts, rashes and sores and you might get the message across.
In the lad mags, the ad nestles amongst forests of boobage designed to make the blood rush away from young men's heads. Hardly the best way to get them to think, is it?

2 comments:

The Kaiser said...

"men in their twenties"...

that's really fucking funny chimp.

andreea said...

Hah, it reminds me of that Robin Williams quote...

“See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.”

This ad here...someone overlooked that quote!