From top: The controversial ad that Nike pulled this summer, an award-winning BMW ad, and the Commercial Closet’s Mike Wilke (left) with Levi’s Robert Cameron.
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By Dustin Fitzharris
Friday, August 01, 2008
It’s been a brutal few weeks for advertising. Both Nike and Snickers have come under attack for sending homophobic messages in their recent ads. The result—both companies axed the ads, proving again that advertisers still need direction when it comes to using LGBT images and references when trying to sell a product.
To promote their new Hyperdunk basketball shoes campaign, Nike developed a print ad featuring a basketball player dunking a ball—as he’s mid-air, his crotch jams into an opposing player’s face. Over the image in giant lettering, the tag line “That Ain’t Right” appears. Many viewers took the message to read, “Man-on-man action ain’t right.”
At first Nike defended the ad, saying, it was “based purely upon a common insight from within the game of basketball—the athletic feat of dunking on the opposition, and is not intended to be offensive.” Nike also clarified the company has a “history of supporting athletes regardless of their sexual orientation.”
The Nike ad isn’t completely extinct. It still can be found hanging in various parts of the city.
And you’d think Snickers would have learned after its Super Bowl debacle in 2007, where it featured an ad with two mechanics accidentally touching lips—in other words, “kissing”—when they both bite into a candy bar. After being disgusted by their lip-lock, one mechanic yells, “Do something manly!” and the duo proceed to physically beat each other.
Now, in a U.K. TV spot, Snickers hired Mr. T to harass a male speed walker in short yellow shorts with swinging hips. Mr. T yells, “Speed walking. I pity you fool. You a disgrace to the man race. It's time to run like a real man.” He takes out a machine gun and fires the man with Snickers bars, forcing him to run and not walk.
Mike Wilke, founder and executive director of the Commercial Closet Association (CCA), a non-profit watchdog group that monitors LGBT images in advertising, condemned both spots. Since founding CCA in 2001, he has educated advertisers, ad agencies, the media and consumers on more effective and informed ways to reference the LGBT community within advertising.
“Neither campaign met Commercial Closet Association's best practices. Snickers' punch line was about insufficient masculinity, and Nike’s punch line was simply based upon the expectation of homophobia by consumers,” said Wilke, a former business reporter who has earned awards from Gay & Lesbian Association Against Defamation (GLAAD) and Out magazine for his coverage of gay advertising issues. “Sales success is about getting consumers to like your brand. Advertisers will be more successful in business by not using outdated, polarizing approaches to humor.”
To honor companies and organizations that have included the best LGBT images and issues in advertising, CCA held its fourth annual Images in Adverting Awards on July 28 at New World Stages. It’s the only national awards event of its kind.
Advertisers’ LGBT spots have made strides, Wilkes said. “This year, winners not only produced LGBT inclusive spots but also broadcast them on national cable channels focused at a general audience.”
Levi’s took home the night’s top honor, winning Outstanding Commercial. The commercial, produced by the advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty, was created with two separate endings. The winning ad shows a young male pulling on a pair of Levi’s jeans as the street below him comes crashing through his floor, leaving him face-to-face with an attractive stranger in a nearby telephone booth. In one version the stranger in the phone booth is a woman; in the other, the stranger is a man. In both, the two individuals flirtatiously smile at each other and then walk off into city side by side.
Robert Cameron, vice president of marketing at Levi’s, said the company’s goal was to make an ad for the LGBT community with the same production values as any other ad, calling it an “exercise in equality.” Having the same ending was also strategic. Cameron explained: “If someone saw the ‘straight’ ad and had no problem with it and then saw the ‘gay’ version and said it was too risqué, they [Levi’s] could say it’s the same exact ad.”
“We found there were no objections,” Cameron said. “We only got one letter against it.”
Levi’s is not new to the LGBT scene. In 1992 it were the first Fortune 500 Company to recognize same-sex domestic partnerships, providing those employees with full benefits. Currently it is shooting six more LGBT-themed commercials that will air on Logo.
Also at the CAA awards, BMW’s “Hard Top. Firm Bottom. It’s so L.A.” campaign won in the category of Outstanding Print/Outdoor Ad—Mainstream Market
.
Washington Mutual’s “Joint Checking” campaign won in the category of Outstanding U.S. Print/Outdoor Ad—LGBT Market
. And
Garden State Equality’s “Think Equal” and “Busy Family” campaigns won in the category of
Outstanding Nonprofit Campaign.
The Commercial Closet’s nomination process begins with Wilke. The group’s advisory board then selects the finalists and the group’s governing board chooses the winners.
New Trends: Gay Spokespeople
One of the current trends Wilke is seeing in advertising is using openly gay celebrities as spokespeople. Ellen DeGeneres is a face for American Express, and comedian Mario Cantone is doing voiceovers for the hair care product company Sunsilk (CCA nominated that ad in 2007 for Outstanding Commercial).
“This shows the increased comfort level people have with the gay community,” Wilke said.
Wilke said more viewers began accepting LGBT-themed ads after DeGeneres came out on her ABC comedy “Ellen” in 1997. “Will & Grace” and “Queer as Folk” followed. And of course, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” continued the trend.
“Once the taboo was broken, the storylines were used in all sorts of ways—sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse,” Wilke said. “It’s been a situation where all areas of representation have increased, so negative depictions have grown at the same time as the positive.”
CCA recently launched its renovated web site, which contains more than 4,000 video and print ads from around the world—some dating as far back as the 1930s. Ads are given an “AdRespect Score, a numerically based system used to rate ads on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best) based on the types of representations and inclusiveness toward the LGBT community.
New features on the site include a YouTube-friendly video format to view and comment on ads, a tool to save your favorite ads, the ability to send direct feedback to companies about ads, a discussion forum and a variety of membership options. CCA also allows corporations to test their ads before they go live.
Nearly a decade after the CCA was born, Wilke still remains committed to changing the face of advertising for the LGBT community.
“There is a constant evolution that we are living in the midst of, and if we are able to chart and influence that, that is part of the excitement,” Wilke said.
To view all of the nominated and winning ads of the Images in Advertising Awards, visit commercialcloset.org
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