Fashion goes soft porn
By Marc E. Babej and Tim Pollak (Forbes.com)
Updated: 2006-10-08 16:35
Perhaps more surprisingly, select upscale marketers are becoming open to an
association with adult imagery. Fashion designer Marc Jacobs, for example,
recently gave a porn movie crew permission to shoot a scene in his SoHo store
(if it's any consolation, the movie is billed as a porn "remake" of Fellini's
classic "La Dolce Vita"). Has Marc Jacobs gone mad? Not at all. Rather, a
calculated move: In the jaded world of fashion and entertainment, association
with porn is becoming a way to demonstrate edginess.
An adult movie shoot in a high fashion store might pique the interest of
celebrities and industry insiders, but risqué online ads are bound to have a
much broader impact. Take upscale lingerie brand Agent Provocateur, whose
"Dreams of Miss X" made-for-Internet movies star Kate Moss in various states of
undress. European standards for nudity might be more lax, but of course Agent
Provocateur's movies can be seen by Internet users in the U.S. just as easily as
in Europe. On the Internet, wardrobes can malfunction with relative impunity.
Yet even that effort pales next to the campaign for French clothing brand
Shai (pronounced "shy"), which has released a new catalog in the form of
made-for-Internet porn movies. Search Shai on Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news -
people ) and you are directed to a company site aptly titled sexpacking.com that
features three movies labeled "men-women," "men-men" and "women-women." The copy
is a simple play on the brand name: "There's no reason to be shy," and the
actors surely aren't. What does a porn scene have to do with clothes?Scrolling
over little green dots allows viewers to get more information on the items worn
(or taken off) by the porn stars.
Is this smart marketing? Advertisers have always ridden the coattails of
popular culture to get attention and connect with their audience. Pornography
today clearly qualifies as popular culture, representing some 25% of daily
search engine requests. Discretion--and laws designed to protect minors from
explicit content--will prevent this from becoming a mass marketing technique.
But for fashion or lifestyle brands with well-defined audiences, X-rated ads may
well be worth the risk.
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