August 29, 2007

Local hero

Ann Summers – you’ve got to love ‘em. Professionally speaking, I’m muchly impressed with their advertising. Here’s a national chain of shops selling naughty adult stuff (quite tastefully, I might add), yet successfully mixing smutty taglines with local references to create jokes that have a touch of Carry On about them.
The puns always sit alongside a photo of barely-dressed women. For example, “Dirty Limerick” promoted a store in Ireland; “Lancashire Hot Bot” (alluding to a local stew which my grannie used to dish up) with its handcuffed woman informing you that for fashion and passion you should whip along to your local store in Lancaster; and my personal favourite “Ride A Cock Hoarse” (referring to the nursery rhyme Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross), for its Banbury outlet.
The store’s poster ads usually fall foul of the ASA, but I’m delighted to see that Ann Summers was cleared to display this excellent example of localism.

3 comments:

Alan Wolk said...

...and other ads we'd never be able to get away with in America.

RFB said...

cheeky monkeys.

or monkey cheeks.

SchizoFishNChimps said...

most of the time, ann summers doesn't get away with it either