Janet CollinsSex, Advertising and Pamela Anderson
March 1st 2010 05:00
Sex and advertising has made headlines again this week after the banning of a pretty explicit ad featuring Pamela Anderson by Crazy Domains. The ad which features Anderson and another sexy woman posing as senior executives was deemed too tasteless for Australian audiences even in the mature viewing times.
It is certainly not surprising. The ad for the internet domain name and web hosting company starts off with the two women addressing men in a boardroom. Not looking one bit the directors or executives they are supposed to be portraying and showing more than a little cleavage, the two of them turn into bikini clad images rubbing up against each other as one of the men they are addressing starts having fantasies about them.
While I have to agree with the ruling of the Advertising Standards Bureau, sexual images in advertising and popular culture have become more common and more risqué over time. No longer are images only suggestive either. Like the Crazy Domains ad, they are right in your face.
I may not be as sensitive as a lot of other people to explicit images of women in ads but I think there is a line that should not be crossed. I will admit that I am often offended by ads by beer companies for example that seem obsessed with the promotion of their products by big breasted women. There was a Cougar beer ad a few years back that I found a little bit much.
Gavin Collins, Managing Director of Crazy Domains, may have made a very good point when he tried to justify the ad by comparing it to Video Hits and the sexually explicit images that are readily available for kids who watch our pop stars parading on stage in sexual poses with next to nothing on but this can hardly justify his company’s ad.
The thing is we have all become a little blasé over scantily clad women or even overt sexual gestures on our screens, but there still needs to be limits to how far advertisers can go. According to Collins, 66 per cent of people they surveyed about the ad thought the ban should be lifted.
It is always difficult for me to understand how ads such as this one sell more products just as I can’t understand how big breasted women in a beer ad sell more beer. But I doubt anything will change too much. So rather than fight it maybe we should all just stop buying the products.
THE CONTROVERSIAL AD:
Source: The Sun Herald
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Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
Because of attitudes such as those prevalent in his ad- women aren't serious about work! they are all just dying to get their kit off and flaunt their naked bodies for every unattractive loser who stumbles along their path! Business women aren't really business women! They are just strippers in disguise!
At least the naked women in video clips are usually hanging around a pool or something. Not pretending to be business executives.