Wednesday, June 29, 2011

And finally, the most disturbing Cannes Lion winner.

 (click image, via) The Warsaw office of ad agency Publicis says they hung these customized underwear cards with the diddling cursor hand on racks in Coccodrillo, a chain of kids clothing stores. They did this on behalf of some Polish child safety foundation. (The web address is on the card, if you care.)
This may be the creepiest Ad Creep yet. In their press note, the agency says that the stunt got lots of media coverage, and that the foundation's web traffic greatly increased. I question how many of these the agency actually placed in the stores.
Related: a round-up of child abuse awareness advertising.

11 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Besides being really creepy, it's just plain wrong to buy this kind of sexualizing underwear in the first place. Of course children don't get raped because of wearing such underwear but I'm not sure if this is the right way to raise awareness for such a complicated reason and actually help this issue. I fear that too often parents project their own sexuality on their children and make them do and wear weird stuff. A classic example for age-inappropriateness would be a teen pageant contest.

6:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If you think this is the creepiest Ad creep, then you haven't seen much, Ranter. Below is something, called the Human Jukebox, also a Cannes 2011 winner, which is a lot creepier, if you ask me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxN4VC1wn-c&feature=player_embedded

Now back to the underwear stunt by Publicis. I'd call it disturbingly brilliant. I am kinda confused by the 6:01 PM comment. Whoever left the comment: focus on the campaign itself, not on the type of underwear pictured or on what children wear or should wear in general.

Creepy or not (remember the subject of child molestation itself is creepy), this deserved the award.

6:23 PM  
Anonymous mrjohn said...

As a father of a young daughter I'd say we parents don't need to be made aware of the dangers of creepy pervs. If we wish to campaign against pedos on the net the target should be the pedos themselves and the message should be "Go and get help".

The police are getting quite adept at trapping them

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3inw_rBQfC0

10:29 PM  
Blogger Party Gorilla said...

Which Lion did it win? Can't seem to find it in the list of winners...

11:54 PM  
Blogger copyranter said...

I couldn't find it either, but it was posted as a Lion winner by Ads Of The World and others. Maybe they made a mistake, and it was just shortlisted?

6:37 AM  
Blogger copyranter said...

Here it is, Bronze Lion:

http://www.canneslions.com/work/media/entry.cfm?entryid=26958&award=4

11:58 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So this won under (use of) Media, but didn't also win under Direct? Isn't this DM? I'm confused.

1:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm more horrified at their use of the wrong preposition. "In" the internet?

9:48 AM  
Blogger copyranter said...

Anon: It's translated (not well) from Polish for publicity purposes.

9:53 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Re: first post

Campaign aside, I'm not sure I understand your point about "this kind of sexualizing underwear".

What about the underwear in the ad appears overtly sexual to you? The bow? The polka dots?

10:39 AM  
Anonymous disturbia said...

The most disturbing pedo ad ever: http://goo.gl/f4pXo

2:23 PM  

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