You may have been titillated. You may have been turned off (or on, I hope not). You may have been absolutely disgusted. Chances are however, you have have been perturbed by the proliferation of American Apparel ads featuring topless women and butt cheeks hanging around with reckless abandon. The “Downtown L.A”-based clothing provider has cultivated a reputation for the provocative and their advertisements are a clear indication of that. Some (heck most of them) are quite NSFW, but let’s just say that most of them have the occasional butt cheek/boob/crotch in plain view. I had a hard time looking for an ad I could actually post (surprise!) so you’ll all have to settle for this one (sorry men, no nudity here):
That’s AA President Dov Charney there hard at work trying to save the company as if it’s nobody’s business, flanked by his two gorgeous creative directors. In bed. The bolded caption reads: “In Bed with the Boss“. It’s an excellent example of how the power of marketing can be utilized to manage the consumer’s perceptions of and attitudes towards the company. Just months ago, American Apparel was facing bankruptcy and what better way to reassure the public than a genuine window into how one man (and his harem of employee-models) are lifting the company out of near disaster. And while there aren’t any naked models prancing around the ad, it still manages to maintain what AA calls its “provocative, real, unpretentious aesthetic”. Just like how Albertan beef farmers managed to reverse pubic fears over the whole Mad Cow disease scare by managing consumer attitudes, American Apparel is using this ad (and many others) to show the world that not only are they on top of things, but they have managed to keep the inventive spunk that has drawn droves of trendsetters to patronize the brand. Releasing a “boob-free” ad like this one is AA’s way of manipulating potential customers’ affective attitudes towards the company, by painting themselves as a company that at the end of the day can get things done.
Now how’s that for managing impressions (in bed)?
SHREK: For your information, there’s a lot more to ogres than people think.DONKEY: Example?
SHREK: Example? Okay. Uh… ogres are like onions.
DONKEY: They stink?
SHREK: Yes. No!
DONKEY: Oh, they make you cry?
SHREK: No!
DONKEY: Oh, you leave them out in the sun, they get all brown and start sprouting little white hairs.
SHREK: No! Layers! Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.
DONKEY: Oh… you both have layers… You know, not everybody like onions. Cakes! Everybody likes cakes. Cakes have layers.
SHREK: I don’t care what everyone likes. Ogres are not like cakes… You dunce, irritating, miniature beast of burden. Ogres are like onions. End of story. Bye bye. See ya later…
There you go onions, if you are in need of a PR manager then our favourite (and occasionally grumpy) green ogre has you covered! See what proper product placement can do for you? A supporting role in a feature movie!
Okay, so the cameo came before the hype (and by hype I mean an unusual surge of interest in all things onion-y). But onions will not just sit in the sidelines while they watch other vegetables like baby carrots steal the spotlight! Our oft-maligned friend the onion (they don’t always make you cry) has enlisted the help of the Shrek, with Dreamworks granting the Vidalia Onion Committee (VOC) rights to plastering the Shrek name all over packaging and promotional material. According to ABC News, the council has reported a 50% increase in onion sales largely in part due to the ogre’s appeal to a demographic that has always had a hard time eating their vegetables: kids.
But before we hastily conclude that having every single animated character endorse vegetables is a solution to the age-old problem of children refusing to eat their Brussels sprouts, let us look at why exactly this odd partnership works. The VOC has probably had to take into consideration the immediate environment they operate in. Onions have never really been marketed to a specific group of people like baby carrots have in recent years, so why not start now? To reach out to waves of beleaguered home cooks, why not go through their children? It is a known fact that once children fix their beady little eyes on something they find “cool” they will badger their parents to buy it for them. In this case, the committee’s “consumers” are not just the parents who do their groceries, it’s their kids as well. Kids are generally known to be a hard group to sell to, as they are brutally honest with their likes (Justin Beiber, Silly Bandz, Miley Cyrus) and dislikes (vegetables, slimy things, monsters). In this case the best course of action would be to have an endorser with high referential power among children – Shrek and his motley crew seem to be the perfect role models (well, sort of) whose popularity with this particular demographic can be leveraged to sell what kids often consider boring old vegetables.
Who would have thought that a green ogre could get children to eat their onions? Now if only the same were true for Brussels sprouts…
(link to the original ABC News article: Shrek Boosts Vidalia Onion Sales)
