Decent proposal
Ads for booze, jeans and cars make regular and heavy
use of the sex sell. But when it comes to flogging
actual sex products, the messages are often models
of modesty, as two current billboard campaigns show.
Saturday, September 26, 1998
VAL ROSS
The Globe and Mail
Toronto -- One of the billboards is situated, appropriately enough, just
below Toronto's Peter Street, in the mighty, manly shadow of the CN
Tower: "Viagra -- Coming Soon." The word Viagra is underlined by a
curve that looks like a Happy Face smile.
The only other big-type message is the advertiser's name -- not the
famous anti-impotence drug's manufacturer, Pfizer, but rather one of
the retailers who hope to carry the product if and when it is approved
by Health Canada: MediTrust, the country's largest mail-order
pharmacist. The billboard also spells out the Toronto-based pharmacy
company's telephone number.
Scores of the billboards went up across Ontario just last week. Though
they officially publicize the mail-order service, not the product, they
mark the Canadian advertising debut of the prescription drug that has
aroused hope and more in men with erectile dysfunction. Viagra is
coming soon indeed.
Like the wonder drug they mention, the MediTrust ads have brought
hope and pleasure. "We've been inundated with calls from the public,
asking when they can order," said MediTrust's CEO, Norman Paul.
"We're thrilled with the ads and we have every intention of going
national."
But, like sex, the ads have left a few people deeply dissatisfied. "We
don't approve of someone advertising our product, someone who has
nothing to do with us," said Don Sancton, Pfizer Canada in Montreal's
associate director of corporate affairs.
Beyond turf issues, these simple little billboards raise the interesting
question of why mass-market ad campaigns for products that relate to
sexuality -- Viagra, condoms, Tampax -- are typically sheathed in
discretion, while ads for products such as cars and shoes throb with
sexual innuendo. Like almost everything to do with sex in Canada, the
MediTrust billboards reveal our double standards.
Laura Dallal, director of standards and compliance at Advertising
Standards Canada (the ad industry watchdog), has the job of making
sure that no product -- be it Viagra, vinegar or Vaseline -- is promoted
in ways that offend the public. People file complaints with her group for
many reasons, but outraged sexual mores is one of the big ones. Of
483 complaints against ad campaigns filed with Advertising Standards
Canada since January 1998, more than a quarter came under the
heading, "Offensive to taste and public decency."
Advertising Standards' panels upheld just 16 complaints, one of them
against a Labatt's beer ad that showed a taxi driver ogling a woman
passenger in his rear-view mirror as she changed from office clothes to
evening wear in the back seat. At the end of the ride, the driver
cancelled the fare. "Our panel found it problematic that the free ride
was in exchange for the free peek," Dallal said.
Yet the beer company was only following the trend to grab attention
with sexual shock. In the nineties, we've had Benetton billboards using
copulating horses to sell clothes, Manager's blue jeans showing
inflatable sex dolls on its billboards, and last year's ads from Candie's,
a U.S. women's shoe company, showcasing its high heels on the long
legs of actress Jenny McCarthy as she sat on a toilet, her underpants
around her ankles.
Ads for products that relate to sex are almost invariably more tasteful.
Compare Candie's shoes ads to Durex Canada, which has just
launched a national campaign -- broadcast, print, poster and billboard
-- for its condoms. Designed by MacLaren McCann, the ads declare
their innocence and child-like good humour. Drawn in simple, cartoon
shapes, with bold primary colours, they show a sturdy little cactus,
surrounded by thorns that it's shed, a smiling red rocket ship balancing
a feather on its nose, and a worm with a happy grin.
The MediTrust ads, designed by The Metrick System agency in
Toronto, say so little that they surely won't wind up before an
Advertising Standards Canada panel. However, in Dallal's opinion,
they could get entangled with drug- advertising regulations. The ads
may contravene Canadian laws prohibiting the promotion of
prescription drugs beyond the mention of the product's name, price
and quantity.
"You can't promote a prescription drug before it receives approval and
you can't use pictures to show what a drug, any drug, can do," Dallal
insisted. The Happy Face smile? Uh-uh. "You can't enhance the
product." In the minimalist world of acceptable drug ads, that simple
curved line may constitute heavy editorializing.
"There hasn't been a word of complaint so far," said Laurence Metrick,
who designed the campaign. "The ads just say the same thing as The
Globe and Mail is saying: Viagra is coming soon."
MediTrust's purpose, he said, was to raise its profile as a mail-order
pharmacist offering low prices and privacy. "We're reminding people
that they can order at home -- they don't have to hear a druggist tell the
whole store, 'Mr. Jones, your Viagra is ready to be picked up.' "
Besides, he added modestly, "I like the little smile I have when I see
that ad."
If the happy grin is to stay on the MediTrust billboards, though, the ad
will have to slip unscathed through Ottawa's pharmaceutical-ad
regulations. But like Viagra, which has brought erectile dysfunction out
of the closet, the MediTrust ad campaign has already exposed issues
it's time we talked about.
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