Ads That Skirt The Edge

The line between what's acceptable in advertising and what's not is really blurry these days.

Of course, restaurant advertising and marketing are ripe for parody, and trade on the "wink, wink" factor, both for laughs and to seem "cool" to an already jaded consumer viewing pool. Just check out this segment from "The Onion," the online satiric "magazine" who is often so dead-on, you're not sure whether their stories are real or a send-up:


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The "Daily Show" and other satirical programs, stand-up comics, Internet spoofs and even the self-parodies of porn itself have all led us recently to ads that skirt the edge of what's acceptable and what isn't. Of course, good taste has never been required in the ad world, and questionable double-entendres, suggestive copy and even flagrant sexism have long been a way to get noticed and even sell products. Burger King has used a series of drive-by ads created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky to smack the jaded and bored. One of their iconic spots shows a guy waking up with The King in bed.

It made even franchisees uncomfortable, but turned around a marketing slide and helped the company emerge as a player in fast food:



The strategy isn't without its detractors, and recently the company has had to back- peddle on some ads that prompted complaints abroad. The latest controversy stems from an ad running in Singapore strongly suggesting an oral sex act, and which traffics in the imagery of porn (see image at the top). Both Burger King and Crispin Porter deny the ad shop had any involvement in producing what the company calls a "local promotion." Self-appointed guardians of Right and other pundits are screaming about the ad, but it simply is in the same vein as many recent fast food commercials. Just look at this one for Carl's featuring "The Hills" star Audrina Patridge (complete with its own HD "Behind the Scenes/Making Of"):



Or what about this one with "Transformers" star Megan Fox inviting "hot chicks" to top her salacious struggle with a Carl's burger:

(photo by Heart Attack Grill)

There's even a new restaurant in Chandler, AZ called the Heart Attack Grill that features "nurses" in outfits that have more to do with porn fantasies than medicine, though eating the single, double, triple and quadruple by-pass burgers might make you wish one of these ladies had a defibrilator on-hand to go with that push-up bra.

Consider then, this ad for Quiznos:



The problem is: the ad isn't an ad at all, but a send-up from Playboy. But we can't be sure until the final frame.

It's a tougher marketing world out there. Reality TV with shows featuring wall-to-wall deleted expletives and confrontation, confessional asides running down fellow castmembers (often fueled by alcohol provided by producers looking to ignite fireworks) tend to validate confrontation. The pervasive presence of pornography has seen a return to frat boy social graces ("The Man Show," Spike TV). If advertising is simply a reflection of our age, then these ads seem perfectly in-tune with the times.

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