Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Substituting Homoeroticism For Health Claims: The New POM Wonderful Advertising

Actor Erik Fellows wanders through the desert without a care how the sun will damage his skin. Why? Because he has the anti oxidant power of POM Wonderful. Ahem.

Okay, let me say I have been a customer. I actually seed pomegranates every week and put them on my cereal (along with blueberries). I drink pomegranate juice. I do this because there is anecdotal evidence for prostate health. However, last week the FTC finally woke up to its responsibilities and came down on POM for what they said were unsubstantiated claims. And heaven knows, POM does do its best to have people believe that their product will help protect men from prostate cancer. That it's 40% as effective as Viagra. Well, I think Erik Fellows on my TV screen (or anywhere in my home) would obviate the need for Viagra.

Now that POM is having trouble with their health claims, they've created some videos that get to the sexual potency claims without saying anything directly. Though in one ad they allude to the fruit's mythical status as an aphrodisiac. They also allude to the claims they can't make by saying "backed by modern science," but they don't say what claim is being backed up. This is classic weasel wording.

When I first started as a copywriter, I remember working on Cascade dish detergent. You know, it gets dishes VIRTUALLY spotless. Not spotless, virtually spotless. Almost. Because they can't make the full claim legally. UNSURPASSED is another weasel work: it means that the product being sold is equal to the competition — it's a parity product. The POM videos are beautiful examples of weasel wording.

These videos are beautifully shot. They use mythic imagery and eroticism to make the emotional association to the claims they can no longer say legally. And I suspect if POM had introduced their product with these video spots they would have become award winners, and given POM a classy image. They may yet do so. The spots certainly have what it takes to win some awards. 

But nowadays, I get Marco Polo brand pomegranate juice. It costs a lot less, and isn't as sweet. And I know that unlike Persephone, even though I consume hundreds of pomegranate seeds in a week, I'm no prisoner of Hades.

You can see the full POM ad below, and you can read about the FTC complaint against POM here.

Facebook, Gay Rights, Advertising, Political Organizing and Free Speech.

There are hundreds of Facebook groups organized around political principles and action. I belong to some of them. A couple of weeks ago there was another Facebook firestorm when the Boycott BP page lost admin privileges. Facebook said it was a glitch and the page privileges were restored. Not so for the Target boycott page — and the paper with the business scoop behind it is Washington D.C.’s MetroWeekly: Facebook will be selling gift cards in Target stores this fall holiday season, so enabling a boycott through their platform directly goes against their business interests. And lets not forget that Facebook is a business.

 The details were reported in USA Today:

 The social-network giant is getting into the gift card business, starting Sunday, with Facebook Credits cards. The new Facebook gift cards will be available in values of $15, $25 and $50 at all of Target's 1,750 retail stores and at Target.com. Two or three more national retailers will start selling the cards in coming months. This will be the first time Facebook has had any presence in a retail store. Facebook already has an arrangement with online-payment services PayPal and MOL to purchase Facebook Credits.

How big a business is this? In today's New York Times,  it is estimated that this year alone the  market in Facebook credits will reach $835 million.  

So it’s no surprise Facebook has disabled the administrative functions of groups that are organizing a boycott of Target in response to Target’s contributions to anti-gay politicians.

 The Internet is a friend of the corporate oligarchy.

 Facebook isn’t some non-profit service to the world community. Like Google, it is an advertising platform. Their value is in the private information they collect and use to help advertisers target prospects and customers.

 In the world of advertising, when an advertiser asks for personal information from a prospect or customer there is always something called a value exchange. The customer gives up some personal information in return for an offer, a discount, something useful. Think of it as a trade.

 Facebook is just such a trade — it has enabled half a billion people around the world to communicate in groups in ways that have never been possible. Of course, along the way, Facebook has collected enough personal information on all these people to make the secret police in any state quiver with desire. The Stasi would be envious of their info gathering ability.

Even without giving up specific information an MIT study last year demonstrated that Facebook friend connections could be used to determine with a strong degree of accuracy whether a man is gay even if he is in the closet.

An Unprecedented Level of Personal Information Given Freely Can Lead To Less Freedom

I am under no illusions when I use Facebook. Or Google for that matter. Just as I have given out information on this blog that could be used by a totalitarian government as evidence to imprison me for thought crimes and/or political beliefs, sexual practices, etc., my actions on Facebook and Google give corporations the information they need to imprison me in the net of the corporate oligarchy.

Remember, I’m an advertising executive. I like advertising. I believe it has a positive social role. I think the internet makes finding stuff I want amazingly easy — just last week I bought a book of Nepalese folktales from a publisher half a world away from their site. But search engines, or Facebook for that matter, like any tool, it can be used for ill. A hammer can be used to build a house or bash a head. And when you hold a hammer, you understand it’s possibility to do both those things.

 When you use Facebook, you may not think about how it can be used against you. Many young people have learned already that posting photos of drunken student antics have ruined employment possibilities. That’s because today, human resources departments don’t need to seek references — they can simply Google your name and see whatever might be online. This is not news. What was news the other weeks was when Google head Eric Schmidt joked about it suggesting people change their names legally if they wanted to hide their past internet indiscretions.

Facebook as a public utility rather than a business —  First Amendment rights should apply.

So Facebook has an economic interest in making sure Facebook users shop at Target. And they have an interest in making sure no one can use their service to spread information about a Target boycott.

However, when a service like Facebook becomes so ubiquitous as to have taken on the role as public square, we have to claim our role as citizens — not consumers. Facebook in fact is denying the right of free speech. Not unlike a shopping mall tries to deny political speech in mall common areas.

The public square, and the streets, as public property are protected by the First Amendment. Facebook however, is a corporation, and users give up their rights to use the service. This is the creeping danger of corporate media and the web.

Broadcasters, because they are licensed by the state to use the airwaves (how quaint a thought, airwaves) which belong to the public, must abide by certain rules — from providing community and educational programming as well as free advertising time for public service messages.

Webcasters like Facebook do not seem to have these restrictions — even though the infrastructure for the Internet was developed by the federal government. And while it has evolved far beyond that original infrastructure, the internet, like the airwaves, are a public trust. And corporate webcasters like Facebook should be subject to fairness doctrines just as broadcasters were — I saw were because if there were still a fairness doctrine Fox news would not exist. And while I don’t believe in censorship, I do believe that since Fox news is really propaganda and nothing else their license to broadcast should be revoked.  The fairness doctrine must be restored to broadcasting.

The internet, since it was developed by the government, is a public trust, and net neutrality must be maintained.

The internet, as a public trust, is also a place where the rights around public speech must hold.

These are bedrock principles we as citizens (and lets remember our role and responsibility as citizens instead of the role we have been assigned by the corporate oligarchy as mere consumers) must demand are enforced by our elected officials before they are completely bought out.

Is this all it takes to get a cute guy?

Sign me up for fishnet now:

Surprising thought balloons and condoms

Taking off from a porn film fantasy, this print ad for condoms from Switzerland plays with the convention that appears in comic books — the thought balloon or bubble. WIkipedia calls the thought bubble a "the almost universal symbol for thinking in cartoons. It consists of a large, cloud-like bubble containing the text of the thought, which is connected to the area next to a character by a chain of increasingly smaller circular bubbles"

In this ad however, the thought does not appear in the balloon — the condom/balloon/bubble is the thought! And the headline then encourages to go beyond thought into action: "Don't just think about it." Or as Rocky Horror would say it: Dont' dream it, be it.

Hilarious. Attention getting. Playful. Proud. Love it.

As often the case, ad grabbed from adsoftheworld.com

How can you get a heart transplant from someone with no heart?

This ad campaign, which also includes tattoos that say Skinhead and White Pride, are another example of the shock value Public Service Ad, created more for an award show than to actually change minds or affect behavior. Well, the behavior it is designed to affect is that of award show judges. All I can think of looking at this ad promoting organ donation is the old song (by a punk group called, of all things, the Adverts) Looking Through Gary Gilmore's Eyes -- a song in which the main character wakes up with eyes transplanted from the recently executed murderer, Gary Gilmore. Somehow, I don't think the crazies of Westboro Church have God Hates Fags tattoos. Or hearts. Nevertheless, here's the ad:

From adsoftheworld.com

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar — and sometimes it's not: simulated oral sex in advertising

This anti-smoking campaign from France certainly does what most public service ads do: go for shock value and push the edge in order to win an award — since it certainly isn't going to stop anyone from smoking.

 

The headline translates as "Smoking makes you a slave to tobacco." There are no master/slave accoutrements, but then that whole scene can be a head game anyway (pardon my French).

By the way, the campaign includes two other ads posted on adsoftheworld.com — two of the ads have boys and one a girl. Paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine.

Superbowl Exposed: The real reason they couldn't show a ManCrunch commercial...

Between the butt shots from below of the players, to the butt shots of the men in the Dockers Superbowl commercial, showing a spot for ManCrunch would expose just how truly homoerotic football is.

Queering the Icon: Marilyn Monroe, Dean's Scotch and Yasumasa Morimura

The image of Marilyn Monroe standing above the subway grate as a gust a air blows her dress up high is an American cultural icon of the 20th Century. Nicholas Roeg's film, Insignificance, opens with the the filming of this famous scene in The Seven Year Itch re-imagined from the POV of the film crew — and the man under the grating who turned on the fan. Roeg's film, far from camp, is among other things a meditation on the prison of sexism: my favorite scene in that film is when Monroe, with the aid of toys bought at F.A.O Schwarz, explains the theory of relativity to its author, Albert Einstein.

In the ad below, this image is appropriated once again, in the service of selling Dean's Scotch:

Created by a team at Scholz & Friends NRW in Germany, their explanation, at Adsoftheworld.com notes that:

"Dean’s Whisky is especially mild. Which is why it appeals not only to rugged guys. The advertisement’s unusually humorous, feminine look and feel are designed to arouse the interest of a new target group and raise awareness of Dean’s Whisky above and beyond its loyal customer base."

Arouse the interest? Who is this new target base? Is this ad running at gay magazines in Germany? In women's fashion magazines? Inquiring minds want to know.

Scotch is one of the few hard liquors that retains an aura of masculine privilege. This might have the effect of undermining their image with the base customer. This isn't to say that I don't like the ad. I think it's hilarious and playful. The image of a man in a regimental kilt uniform is hardly fey. There is every possibility that the core consumer for this product is secure enough so that if they saw this ad they'd laugh. Then again, because this is a "mild" Scotch, it might not have very much of a base with the traditional Scotch drinker, so that an effort like this won't hurt.

I wonder what Marilyn would make of it though. Or what she'd make of the photographs of Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura. I first saw an exhibit of his self portraits at the Saatchi Gallery in London: images of the artist in drag as Marilyn, Audrey Hepburn, Garbo, Liza Minelli. You can see the photos on the gallery site, where the question is asked:

"Morimura is more than just art's most famous drag queen. Dealing with issues of cultural and sexual appropriation he is constantly exploring ideas of image consumption, identity and desire: Can Brigitte Bardot be as innocently flirtatious with angular Japanese features? Would Marilyn Monroe be as sexy if she was Japanese - and a man?"

Having lived in Japan where I both enjoyed and endured drag acts where these Western film icons were portrayed by Japanese men, I was less interested in the questions posed above than the questions around Japanese identity and the effect of Hollywood and American cultural dominance on the traditional Japanese sense of beauty. I am curious about what the reaction to images is in the debate/discussion about the feminization of Asian men in the West within the Asian and gay Asian communities.

Within the discussion of constructed femininity, Morimura throws a light on the minstrelsy of Marilyn; how her image was just as much a creation out of the fantasies of men as Thomas D. Rice's blackface Jumpin' Jim Crow was a creation out of the fantasies of white men in the 19th Century of black men. 

Good grief, I hope to God I am not turning into a queer theorist. Ewww.

ManCrunch and Millions of Dollars of Free Advertising

Hey, I'm a gay man in the ad business. A single man, seriously looking to find a partner to settle down with. So I like to think I know what online dating services are out there — and whether they're any good or not. Except that last week I learned about ManCrunch — without them spending a dime on media advertising. That doesn't mean they weren't on the airwaves, or all over the net.

As just about all gay men who pay attention to media representation know, ManCrunch submitted a TV spot to CBS for the SuperBowl. They had to know it wouldn't be accepted. I doubt they even had the budget to run the spot even though the company claims they offered a cash payment. But the attendant media firestorm around the submission and turn down got the spot play on websites and cable TV comedy shows nationally.

This is a brilliant strategy of playing the media. And Reuters nails it in a story about ManCrunch and GoDaddy. Now if there were only a brilliant strategy to find a guy online for something serious. And believe me, I'm not looking for someone who wants to watch the Super Bowl with me. Unless it's to fast forward to the advertising.

Is Facebook Going Amazon On Us? Social Networking, Homophobia, Advertising and Censorhip

Gay activist and prolific author, Perry Brass, finds that his latest book, The Manly Art of Seduction, has been banned from advertising on Facebook. This is peculiar, since I've seen advertising for male "massage" therapists on Facebook who offer services that are not part of the licensing process. Not that I am in favor of FB posting those "massage" ads. If you're looking for that sort of think you know where to go. But Perry's book is not of that order. It's about how men connect with men — energetically, romantically, spiritually, physically, emotionally, sexually. And since you can buy it on the famously messed up for gay writers, Amazon, FB shouldn't have a problem with it. But they seem to, as noted here at Out In Jersey.

Meanwhile, if you're interested in learning some of these skills first hand, Perry's got a workshop in NYC on the 20th of this month at the Center. I imagine it will be a lot of fun — and enlightening on many levels.