My 16-year-old son received his annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue recently. After leafing through it, it struck me he may be already too old for many of the ads which are famously custom-crafted for this issue alone.
There’s a lot of weirdness here, folks, and it makes you wonder what they’re thinking at the agencies whose ad-crafters were once again put upon to come up with something Appropriate (ie: Inappropriate) for the Swimsuit Issue. Strangely, the editorial shots seem almost demure, innocent. But the ads make sex leering and slutty as it should be.
The gatefold front cover flips out to show a young lady in Levi’s jeans, and an open jean jacket, under which she is topless of course. But she is standing over a very large mag wheel. Is this because she likes cars better than sex? Is it because she is meant to appeal to boys who like cars better than sex? Interesting. Well, okay, maybe not.
Next spread is for the ESPN Sportscenter show, and features Dale Earnhardt Jr. sitting in a large chair in a very large garage or possibly a very sparsely furnished living room (a Corvette is up on a hoist behind him). He is watching the 1 a.m. Sportscenter on a gigantic TV set and has a can of something in his hand. Whatever lifestyle icon Dale is representing here, girls, whether in swimsuits or not, seem not to play a part at 1 a.m.
‘Nother spread is paid for by Jockey. The Pouch Trunk Jockey. On one page, a guy and a girl are lounging outdoors on a weird sort of maybe waterbed in their Jockey underwear, under a wispy canopy draped over poles stuck in the ground. On the other page, still in their canopy bed, still in their Jockey Underwear (actually, she’s rather demure in pajama bottoms), she is giving him a haircut. He laughs. The headline says The next best thing to naked. So that’s what adults do in bed together, eh? A little more off the top!
A maker of eye drops (just ask for Zaditor says the tagline), who simply could not resist the opportunity to be in the Swimsuit Issue, goes for the headline Unfortunately, it does absolutely nothing for eye strain. But itchy eyes due to allergies? Oh yeah. Makes you think about how many 11-year-old boys choose their own brand of ophthalmic eye drops.
The folks who craft ads for Wolverine boots and shoes depict a pair of clunky Wolverine boots on the feet of a beach bunny blonde walking away from us towards the ocean, wearing a very tight thong bikini which appears locked into place between her gluteus max. The headline reads At least her feet are comfortable. You can imagine the young men lined up outside shoe stores across America.
Miller Lite offers the kids an eight-page fold-out poster of a come-hither bimbo in the sand with Miller’s logo stitched into each cup of her bulging bikini. Hey kid, you thirsty? Budweiser, by comparison takes a relatively non-woman-as-sex-object approach, with a spectacularly bikini-clad young woman holding a Bud but with a kind of don’t-even-speak-to-me-unless-you-drive-a-Ferrari look in her eye. A demure little headline reads Confidence is the sexiest thing you can wear. Well that’s what it says.
Captain Morgan Rum opts for the lower road, buying four pages including a gatefold to show us the old boy himself aiming a blasting fire hose at the subjects of a beachside photo shoot in which the six naked female models who have merely been body-painted into their virtual bikinis are laughing and screaming up a storm as the gushing water washes away their last vestige of immodesty.
This shows kids that with enough good rum around, you can dress up as a pirate and disrupt a $30,000-a-day photo shoot without somebody strangling you with your own fire hose. Oh, the headline reads Can you say birthday suit issue?
And wouldn’t you know the media department pitched in by getting the rum ad onto the flip side of the same gatefold used to print the editorial photo feature, in which somebody has body-painted, and I’m not making this up, a map of the entire world on the nude torso of the former Mrs. Rod Stewart, in an obvious attempt to draw long-overdue attention to Terra del Fuego.
The car people are out in force in the swimsuit issue as well. In one double page spread, a Dodge Viper has zoomed past a swimsuit babe kneeling in the sand so fast that the back-draft has sucked off her top ha ha! If there’s a better reason to lust after a Dodge Viper as soon as you’re sixteen, I can’t imagine it. VW shows its new convertible bug with the head Okay, so it had a little work done up top.
Pontiac takes a double gatefold to show us merely two pleasantly photographed Pontiacs and no naked chicks whatsoever which seems oddly like a great relief at this point in our journey through these pages. The headline invites the ogling 11-year-olds to imagine ‘way back when And all of a sudden, you’re nine years old again and girls are ugly. What fools we were. There. You can thank Strategy for saving you nine bucks at the newsstand.
Barry Base creates advertising campaigns for a living. He creates this column for fun, and to test the unproven theory that clients who find the latter amusing may also find the former to their liking. Barry can be reached at (416) 924-5533, or faxed at (416) 960-5255, at the Toronto office of Barry Base & Partners.
