Mike Industries

In case you missed the comments on the last entry, What EXACTLY About This Ad is Offensive?, I suggest taking a look. In 240 blog posts over three years, it’s the most interesting comment thread I’ve ever hosted. Of particular interest:

• Most men seem extremely offended by the ad and view it as rape. Most women seem either entirely unoffended or at least more forgiving of the imagery. This result is entirely counterintuitive and points to the theory that the ad really is aimed at women.
• This post seemed to make its way around in a way most of my posts don’t: over email. It really wasn’t linked to from anywhere except Buzzfeed but many commenters seemed to be first time visitors. I honestly expected the post to be linked to pretty heavily but for the sake of the conversation, I’m glad it didn’t. A Dugg version of that comment thread would not be pretty. :)
• I don’t think there is enough public, interesting discussion about creative advertising these days. I subscribed to AdFreak a little while ago but it’s not exactly what I’m looking for.

Anyway, that’s about it. I normally don’t write posts about other posts, but this one just keeps getting more interesting with each comment.

Dolce & Gabbana recently decided to pull one of their magazine ads (pictured above) after “worldwide protests” by the National Organization for Women and other groups. There were even protests in Spain and Italy, two countries that some consider reasonably lenient when it comes to sexuality in advertising. The argument is that the ad portrays rape.

The ad shows a man and a woman, presumably about to have sex, with four other men at various levels of undress looking on. There’s no denying that the ad is extremely racy and people are well justified to be offended if strikes them negatively, but from a design perspective, I’m interested in *exactly* what elements of the ad push it over the line. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to throw out all people who find every ad involving the objectification of women offensive, because hey, then the entire industry is offensive. I’m also going to throw out all people who think everything is fair game and are offended by nothing. “The line” is basically when it’s offensive enough to the average person that it should be pulled.

So, let’s break down our cast of characters (left to right):

1. Purple Shirted Android Guy
2. Unbuttoned Shirt Guy
3. Mr. Top
4. Ms. Bottom
5. Denim Cutoffs Guy
6. Withdrawn iPod Guy

So the question is, what sorts of combinations of 1-6 would or would not be considered “over the line offensive”?

My opinion?

Removing everybody but Mr. Top and Ms. Bottom would seem to make it a “normal” fashion ad. Strangely, I think that the only person you could add back into the scene in addition to those two would be Withdrawn iPod Guy. He’s away from the action, he doesn’t seem overly interested and his presence doesn’t imply dominance or danger in any way. All three of the standing guys seem to be the worst culprits here, with Denim Cutoffs Guy and Purple Shirted Android Guy being 1 and 2.

Strangely, Mr. Top seems to be in the greatest “position of power” here but I don’t think removing him would really make the ad less offensive. I’m not even sure removing only Ms. Bottom would either. Imagine the ad with Ms. Bottom airbrushed out. It’s still basically an ad depicting a group of guys thinking about having sex with the same woman. The fact that the woman isn’t visible hardly changes things.

These are just my opinions and clearly others may disagree, but after working through the permutations, I think the uproar about this ad has nothing to do with “rape” at all. After all, there’s no evidence to prove that’s actually occurring. It has to do with multiple men having sex with the same woman in one setting, and that (perhaps rightfully so) is what causes this campaign to cross the tastefulness line.

You can read interviews with Stefano Gabbana (of D&G) and Kim Gandy (of NOW) over at this Newsweek article.

Disclaimer: I have never purchased any D&G products and I’m not a proponent of this campaign or anything it depicts. It’s just an interesting advertising issue to me.

I stopped by my local pizza joint tonight to grab a lazy dinner, and upon getting to the counter I noticed that I had five ones and one twenty.

The tab was $7.30 so the obvious choice would be to whip out the twenty, which I did. Upon holding this Jackson in my hand though, I remembered it wasn’t just any Jackson. It was a pre-1998 redesign Jackson. 1969 in fact.

I’d had this beauty in my wallet for a couple of weeks and tried not to spend it — although I knew I eventually would unless it was put into safe keeping. Such a beautiful bill… clearly superior in every way to the new rubbish.

My head told me I was the only person in the restaurant who would care about such a thing.

Inhale. Exhale. I handed the bill unceremoniously to girl behind the counter.

“Oh wow! An old twenty! I’m SO keeping this!” she said to my surprise as she plucked a modern twenty from her own wallet and made the exchange.

“I’m glad it’s going to someone who appreciates it,” I said as I watched her show it off to the other employees.

After relinquishing the twenty, I realized that it had been probably two or so years since I’d seen one… and I pay with cash a lot. I wonder what that says about the shelf-life and geographic distribution of paper currency in our country. I’d love to see some studies on this.

UPDATE: Kottke, the master of interesting cultural trivia, is up-to-date on this and has detailed info.

If a communicatee is at all interested in understanding a communicator and the communicatee misunderstands something the communicator communicates, it is almost always the fault of the communicator.

I need to communicate better.