Advertising the impossible product? In most cases designers and marketeers have it easy*. Whatever they have to promote or package chances are it’s going to be something that most people won’t have a strong opinion on. Unless you’re working on some sort of political campaign, trying to sell cigarettes or working either side of the abortion divide, people will rarely raise an eyebrow and the creative people involved rarely have to struggle with packaging up something they know is at the very least a divisive issue.
Of course, there’s one product that is uniquely positioned, that we all seem to quietly ignore and pretend it’s not there and yet it represents in one basic aspect a fundamental part of our life cycle and now, more than ever its in more places and more accessible than ever before. Of course, we’re talking porn.
For such a huge, global industry and for such a popular product it’s strange that it’s had to live it’s life in the shadows. Promoting its own wares has never been easy and never been mainstream and it’s quite apt to describe the challenge of it’s promotion outside of its usual realms as ‘Advertising the impossible product’. With every generation comes the usual (and necessary) wringing of hands and with every technological leap, print, colour print, cinefilm, VHS & BETAMAX, DVD, HD DVD, Blue Ray, the web, 4k video and now the 3D occulus or similar systems, porn takes new strides into new media.
And as porn marches on it’s slowly becoming both braver in how it sells itself but also it’s becoming more accepted. It;s slowly becoming a mainstream entertainment channel (albeit a very adult one) with legitimate stars, bigger budgets and legions of fans. And with this maturity and its growing acceptance, its now looking to present itself in a more mainstream way. It’s no longer an ‘under the counter’, ’embarrassed to talk about it’, ‘I’ve never watched one’ kind of product, its becoming ‘normal’ for a lot of people.
PornHub (NSFW link!), one of the webs biggest porn portals recently launched a crowd-surfing competition to find a creative genius who could come (no pun intended) up with a new promotional concept that would be suitable for mainstream media. Billboards, taxi cab sides, bus stop posters, magazines, any public advertising platform. The challenge is obvious though the challenge is “Advertising the impossible product”, the challenge is advertising porn in a way that does not offend, does not corrupt minors whilst at the same time lets the viewer know exactly what the product is and what to expect. It’s a toughie.
A lot of the entrants were terrible, most were just average and a very, very small amount of them were extremely clever, witty, smart and answered the brief perfectly. It’s worthwhile having a look at them all whilst they’re still up just to see how clever some people can be and it’s a great reminder to designer or creative person to see any brief, regardless of restrictive, as an opportunity to do something pretty damn smart.
If you don’t get a chance, we thought we’d have a VERY quick go at it. We’re pretty busy in the studio normally but it’s always nice to exercise the design muscles on a particularly sticky (yeah, that pun was intended) problem. Enjoy.
Advertising the impossible product – #PornHub advertising concepts by Studio ROKIT
*BUT even easy jobs can still take a bucketload of blood, sweat and tears.