Male Pornographic Advertising in Singapore?

Ogilvy & Mather in Singapore has created a campaign for Lorgan’s — a furniture store specializing in retro styles from the last century: 1930s through 70s. The store’s website is great fun, and I love love love their Sputnik lamp (we had one over our dining room table around 1965! But it’s the ad campaign — and Singapore — that needs discussion. Visually they show all the goods Lorgan’s sells, and all the ads focus on the 60s. A time that has a reputation for free love. That was really the 70s in the U.S. but let’s not quibble. The people in the ads aren’t there — as in Japanese pornography the shapes are missing, but the empty space they leave leaves little to the imagination. You can see the others, which are all heterosexual couplings (and threesomes) at Adsoftheworld.

What interests me though is the graphic (in both senses of the word) representation of man-on-man action in the ad above. Singapore is not exactly known as a permissive society. While not as conservative as the Islamic law in Malaysia, Singapore is hardly Thailand. Homosexual acts are still illegal there (though rarely prosecuted). And there are public decency laws. I would hazard a guess that certainly the ad above violates section 377 of the penal code, which states:

Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.

On top of that, Singapore has rather harsh laws around the possession of pornography. Remember, this is the city/state that enforced a sentence of caning for a teen aged boy, Michael Fay, just a few years ago for graffiti painting.

So the question is, are these ads really running or is this just spec work posted to the adsoftheworld site to garner attention for O&M Singapore? This is not an unknown strategy for an agency that wishes to up their creative reputation. However, as we saw at Cannes last month, entering work for a client that never ran (or for that matter that the client never saw) can get you in a lot of trouble. In the credits for the ad, they say it was published in April. Is there anyone in Singapore who can verify this?

To rephrase Rosser Reeves: Anybody can be creative, but can you sell it to the client. And then, of course, does it sell to consumers? That’s why I don’t like to see lots of public service spec work in portfolios. If you can’t do a compelling ad for starving children you don’t belong in the business. The real question is, can you do a compelling ad for Tide?

I hope O&M did the Lorgan’s site. It was terrific. I want a Sputnik lamp again!!! I won't say what I might want in any of the print ads however. Of course, my previous post about Chinese army ballet dancers might give you an idea.