We All Love a Cameo Ad.

Here's work that bounces by Sid Lee for Adidas' "All In" campaign. The famous faces and choice of music do a lot of the heavy lifting, but the production's focus on the strength, grace, sense of connectedness and power that animates the active female is what makes it electric.

I actually want to get out of my seat and go get streamlined to a soundtrack. Possibly in a hoodie. Although that probably won't actually happen until I get another back roll (nothing, in the end, is more motivating).

Want more? Visit the Adidas Women Facebook page. (Thanks to Adidas France CM Brice Mazenod for the linky-loo.)

Ad via Le Publigeekaire.

Talky Tits.

Hey, why not give basoomas a personality? Make 'em poetic. Give them names and a cute little Traveling-Pants history.

This is the kind of stuff I hate.*

I'm tempted to lash out with things like, "My tits are pretty apathetic to each other, and for that matter, to me." It feels inevitable though that someone will be like, "Your body loves you, and you should love it back, you awful bitch."

Naw, man. My body loves me just about as much as a virus hates you. It's a machine playing out a program, and trying to convince myself that my various extremities have autonomous emotions is kind of insane.

But maybe this works, and it's for a good cause, and kudos, I guess, to the Pink Ribbon Circle of Life for being willing to sh0w b00b in such a paranoid no-nakie culture.

Work by Grey/Amsterdam and lush femme-focused photographer Rankin ... and there's plen'y more titty where that came from:

Pink Ribbon Magazine - Two Girlfriends (English VO) - (2009) :30 (The Netherlands)

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*Another thing I discovered I hate today: the word "lolcano."

Debutantes, Light Up: The Very First Flashmob?

Following the release of AdVerve's "Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms" episode, a PR guy sent me the above Chesterfield ad from the 1930s.

It speaks to the empowerment women felt when they lit up a smoke -- repurcussions of a marketing campaign I mentioned in passing during the podcast, when, around the time of woman's suffrage, a tobacco company encouraged a number of wealthy debutantes to light up on the streets at exactly the same time.

That's pretty much all I knew about the effort, but after seeing the Chesterfield ad I decided to look it up. Here's what I found:

It was George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company, who recognised that an important part of his market was not being tapped into, and he hired [Freud's nephew Edward Bernays] to expand the sales of his Lucky Strike cigarettes to women.

Bernays applied his talent to the problem. Recognising that women were still riding high on the suffrage movement, Bernays used this as the basis for his campaign. He consulted Dr A A Brill, a leading New York psychoanalyst, to find out the psychological basis for women's smoking. Brill said that cigarettes were equated subconsciously with penises, which women were envious of.

He gave Bernays the idea that, if he could connect cigarettes with the idea of challenging male power, smoking in public could be sold to women, who would then have their own penises. So he came up with an idea for presenting cigarettes as 'torches of freedom'.

Bernays proceeded to stage an event at the annual Easter Day Parade, held in New York and attracting thousands, to introduce this totally irrational notion to American womanhood and it caused a national stir. He got a group of rich debutantes to agree to hide cigarettes in their clothing and, at a given signal, light up together.

He then informed the press this would happen and of course photographers were present in droves and stories appeared in newspapers throughout America.

- Adam Curtis, "A Seething Mass of Desires: Freud's Hold Over History"

This all went down in the mid-1920s; thereafter, Bernays was able to persuade female film stars to light up -- resulting in the adoption of cigarettes among US women in the millions. The big takeaway: in one fell swoop, smoking was successfully linked to "feelings of independence, power and freedom" among those that so needed it.

Does this not astound and amaze? And doesn't the image of smug untouchable rich girls on the street puff-puffing in tandem totally blow away this nonsense? (Not endorsing one or the other; just sayin'.)

Discreet Packaging

Liaison dangereuse, une e-boutique de lingerie fine, viens de lancer la pub "Sexiness for Everyone" ("Pouvoir sexuel pour toutes, partout"), où une femme s'habille d'une manière séduisante avec les culottes hyper-sexy -- et termine avec une burqa.

Peut-être que c'est un cas typique d'un pays d'Europe de l'Ouest montrant le côté fétichiste du Proche-Orient. Mais franchement j'adore la thèse que la burqa lèche les flammes qu'elle est chargée d'éteindre.*

Humor me ››

Viktor & Rolf's Pretty Pretties

Jeremy Danté drew my attention to this ad for Viktor & Rolf's fragrance Eau Mega. But I'm only posting it because it's an excuse to showcase an older piece for V&R's first perfume, Flowerbomb:


The Flowerbomb ad ran through 2008, mostly on the back of women's fashion mags. Something about it compels you to stare, and I suspect it has to do with the colours and textures brought together: that cat-eyed woman with her head wrapped in a gauzy flower-shaped veil, the blushing hue trapped in an angular perfume bottle, V&R's wax seal coupled with a ribbon whose little nibs you can almost feel under your fingers, laced around a porcelain frame...

Then there's that arresting choice of pink, submissive against hard black logo work. It's only by slight changes in shade that you even know where it begins and ends.

Eau Mega's got enough of the same nuances to maintain fidelity to the foundation set by Flowerbomb: flowing gauze, wind-swept gamine, interesting use of soft versus hard texture (you almost feel the cold coiny metal of the V&R seal!) and shadowy contrast that forces yielding yellow into hard angular frames -- brought to stunning relief by that soft kiss of blue.

This under-the-radar attention to detail culminates in a simplicity that draws long gazes and invites curiosity: a recipe, I'm sure, for Viktor & Rolf's intended clientèle.

I Love the Internet.

Priceless, just priceless:

When you have completed a Bombshell Betty Pinup Workshop, you will not only have many amazing, high resolution photos of yourself, you will also have learned the modeling skills needed to get great results from future photo shoots and candid pictures!

“Pose a woman for a shoot, give her great pictures for a day. Teach her to pose, give her great pictures for life!”

Are We All Just Chubbettes Obsessed with Movie Stars?

This afternoon I sat around on MySpace, hitting "Refresh" to see what ads I'd get. Must be a slow month in ad sales; every new banner was a weight loss pitch. Here they are, in order of how I received them:

And it isn't just MySpace that thinks my trunk could use less junk. Last month, Rachel Beckman of the Washington Post wrote an article about the "muffin top" ads that barrage her when she logs on to Facebook. I see them too. All that fleshy muffin-toppiness leaves nothing to the imagination:

So what's the deal, socnets?

A study from earlier this year found women are generally more concerned about weight than disease. And because I'm guessing this passel of tacky, over-obvious and insulting ads don't actually improve perceived site value (MySpace, whatever happened to your Cartier days?), there's just one explanation: women must actually click on these things.

I guess that's cool if you feel açai berry juice will really solve your deep-seated problems. But what about me? Why am I attacked with potshots of love handles five times per visit?

Does persistence ultimately persuade? Or maybe every chick just has a day where, in a rush of self-hatred, she finally wants to read Jen's fucking Weight Journal.