It’s no big secret that sex sells. What’s surprising though, is when a well-known, established brand, with products presumably in demand, resorts to using sex alone to sell it’s products. Exhibit A: Levi’s. The latest spot from the bluejeans moguls has two twenty-something impossibly beautiful people (both in Levi’s, natch) ascending the stairs on their way to what is obviously a “hook-up” (i.e.: meaningless sex between two people that barely know each other). The young man admits “I’m not really in a band.” The girl offers “I’m not really work for a lable.” The conversation continues, with each fessing up to lies they’ve told earlier. The denouement (if you can call it that) comes when he says, “truth is, I’ve been sleeping in my car.” As she strips down to her skivvies, she airily replies, “that’s okay…this isn’t really my apartment,” as the boy switches on the lights to reveal they are indeed in someone else’s apartment.

Pause with me for a nanosecond, whilst we ponder how many ways this ad trashes just about every moral value I can think of.

Let’s start with the typical, “Levi’s is what you wear when you want to be young, hip, and desirable.” (Read: “if you wanna hook up with a hottie, you’d best be wearin’ Levi’s.”) Next, we learn that, apparently, lying to someone to get in their pants is a socially acceptable dating ritual. Then, of course, there’s the whole “what’d you say your name was?” approach to casual sex. Finally, we learn that breaking and entering is A-OK, as long as you’re gonna get lucky.

What ever happened to selling jeans based on ideas like they last, their versatile, and they go with just about anything?

Look, I like looking at attractive women every bit as much as any other guy, but I’m getting pretty fed up with the idea that it’s okay to say anything, do anything, and promote anything, just to make a buck. Why does Levi’s believe it’s okay to tacitly approve of things like cheap, virtually anonymous sex, breaking into someone’s home, and lying to get what you want? Are their products so out-of-touch, expensive, or uncompetitive that they feel they must resort to pandering to the lowest emotions in order to sell their wares?

You know, I used to wear nothing but Levi’s, six days a-week. (If they’d have made men’s suits, it would have been seven days a week.) One day, I was looking for a new pair, and ran into a problem – my size was unavailable. And my need for a new pair had reached the critical stage. I remember going to three or four stores, and having no luck (apparently, I wear a pretty popular size). I was so desperate, I had no choice but to consider another brand. I tried on a pair of Wranglers. It was a revelation – they fit better, were more comfortable, and were about ten bucks cheaper than the same style of Levi’s. That day, I became a “Wrangler Man” – and haven’t looked back since. There’s not enough advertising budget in the world to get me to switch back, unless Wrangler suddenly starts making an inferior product.

Perhaps Levi’s might try something radically simple: go back to making a better product, at a competitive price, with ads that don’t offend a sizable portion of their market. Otherwise, perhaps they’d be better off making their media buys on the Playboy Channel or maybe look towards Skinimax for some product placement ideas.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 12:23 am and is filed under advertising.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.