Still A Virgin?

Waiting at the bus stop on Oak and Broadway the other day, I encountered a peculiar advertisement which some of you may have already seen. It was a plain, text-only ad and it went something like this:

Still a Virgin?
For help, call 1-888-743-4335
(An image of the poster can be found here.)

Note the bold, red highlight! Now my first impression was that this advertisement was for that of a prostitution service, so I paid the ad no further heed. But wait a second, I thought, that can’t be right! From my [limited] understanding of Canadian prostitution law, surely this public communication of sexual services, albeit implied, breaches multiple levels of legislation. Certainly this suggestivity could not possibly have been too subtle, especially for those uptight stooges at the Advertising Standards Bureau? I scanned for clarification in the form of small print, anything to shed some light on this twisted but completely welcome humour. Nothing.

At this point, allow me to assure you that I positively have no interest in prostitution whatsoever, and had no intention to hire an escort. But damn, did that ad stick in my mind. Eventually I went home and Googled it, found out that it’s a movie called The Virginity Hit – but that’s not the point. The point is, this overly simple text poster was able to not only harness my attention, but pique my interest in something in which I had no interest. Sounds paradoxical, sure, but that’s basically what they did. Hell, I might even go watch it now that I’ve seen the trailers for it.

Now that’s advertising.