<< I want to know if anybodys brought a pair of Clavin Klien jeans since this artical was put up? >>

Good query. Not me Huggins. Never bought a pair of CK jeans or any other new jeans for that matter. Buy my clothes at Vinnies of Lifeline.

While it is interesting to ponder the motivations and connotations of ads like this, they completely don’t work for me. In fact, they work strongly against their purpose – they tell me that the product is definitely grossly overpriced and that if you look around you’ll get something just as good for a fraction of the price.

Attracting and maybe even having sex with many admirers, especially strangers, is a common reported theme of female sexual fantasy, as evidenced in the SBS documentary The Female Orgasm Explained that is presently being shown at present,

http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/thefemaleorgasmexplained/about/synopsis

There is a pod-cast.

No-one has produced any evidence so far to suggest that Calvin Klien was doing anything but recognising and appealing to women's fantasies in the billboard advertisement. For what reason would a reputable business, or any business for that matter, waste a small fortune in advertising dollars misdirecting its advertising to titillate men when they are in fact trying to sell a product to young women?

It is like shooting fish in a barrel, getting men to defend themselves when they should be picking up on the very obvious, which is that this is censorship directed at women and instigated by women. Men are just pawns in the game, the cover for the traditional censorship of women, especially younger women, by those women who consider themselves to be the keepers of other women's morals.

There is the easy, simple and reasonable explanation for the scene in the billboard, which is that Calvin cleverly sought to appeal to young, healthy, fashionable women with money to spend and then there is the complicated, censorious allegation, that this company set out to waste a large sum of its advertising money to offend their women buyers while entertaining those disgusting men.

Any in doubt of what women might fantasise about should view the SBS documentary again.

My general experience with the ASB is that a number of people have to complain, and then the ASB might consider the ad.

If they are going to review the ad, the company supplies the ABS with the ad together with an excuse (although this costs the company time and money to do this).

About 100% of the time, the excuse will say that the ad was reviewed by a private panel before it went public, and the majority of the people on the panel approved the ad as being appropriate.

The company will also likely say that the ad was meant to be “funny” or “quirky”, which is another way of saying that the ad was meant to get up your nose.

The ASB is a farce that dismisses about 99% of complaints. But they sometimes put the complaints online, and everyone can see the company involved.

My complaints have mainly been about sexists, discriminatory, feminist type ads that portrayed men as being dumb and stupid.

Hi Ludvig I havent brought any CK jeans either! If the add was suposed to sell jeans it doesnt seem to work very well hey?

Very interesting Cornflour but have you brought any CK jeans?

Huggins,

So you haven't found any women's CK jeans to fit, dear?

Don't fret, ute owners are more into the Colonel's finger lickin' chicken and Coke (or is that Pepsi?) than CK jeans and that is for sure. The unisex rectangular and square shaped jeans in Target are for you.

CK is appealing to a different section of society entirely.

Now is it a black Holden SS ute you drive or are you a Ford tragic?

<< If the add was suposed to sell jeans it doesnt seem to work very well hey? >>

Huggins, I reckon that CK knows exactly what they are doing with their advertising and that it works very well for them, and all the more so now that the ASB has publicly criticised this ad, the media has taken it up, and online discussions have followed.

I reckon the ASB finding, which was purported to point the finger at CK for overstepping the mark, has achieved precisely the opposite – it has done the company a whole lot of good.

What’s that old saying? ‘Any publicity is good publicity’.

It makes you wonder why more companies don’t really push the envelope in the hope that they will be pinged by the ASB!!

I’m still not sure how this business really operates, but it seems that with the self-regulation regime, companies are free to put up billboards or other ads that clearly overstep the mark, and then if they are ordered to take them down, they’ll rejoice in a really successful outcome, because they’ll get much more coverage for their add, publicity about the company and positive notoriety than they could ever hope to get with an ad that stayed comfortably within the guidelines!