Ads Gone Bad: Calvin Klein's amateur porno marketing

haven't been able to buy anything CK since the first set of ads. totally creepy. won't ever buy any of his stuff as a result.

calvin klein has always had provocative ads.
this is just one of their most tasteless ones. it is clearly not appropriate just like most of the early advertisements the line has produced. watching this is shocking and how someone created/participated in the filming and or acting of this commercial is unethical and weird. ew.

I think that it was the way that the camera style was, the way that the man was off camera and sounded very much older, and how the people on camera looked to be very uncomfortable....as if they had just met the person...keep in mind, people....Jeffrey Dahmer (sp?) did the SAME thing....and he was no pedophile, it was people slightly younger than him, but still adults. This ad was very disturbing.

I hate to say this because it dates me, but they have been doing a similar schtick for over 20 years, since the ads where 18 (or so) year old Brooke Shields sticks out her rear end and says (something like) "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins." I didn't like those commercials when I was a kid either, however, the jeans fit the best of any of them.

Let me get this straight. All of the models were old enough to take off all of their clothes and make a porno film which could be legally sold and possessed by anyone, but, because they are selling jeans, it's 'creepy' and 'disgusting'. You people really need to get a grip. You're the same kind who think it's perfectly ok for an 18 year old to join the army and go die in Iraq, but that the same 18 year old should be locked up in jail if he/she drinks a beer.

S - T - U - P - I - D ! ! !

Nothing -----Nothing about the ad gives me a reason to purchase CK britches.

Worse than amature

these Calvin Klein adverts are ingenious!

(and as other posters have already pointed out, it would be ludicrous to claim they promote pedophilia: with one only exception, all these actors are clearly over 14, let alone 18! (one identifies himself as 20, and another girl, the brit, is easily 21).

what makes them so clever is that they are represent an un-brand approach to marketing: these customers do not crave the product; they do not invest their identity in the product.

Moreover, they remain almost indifferent to the attention - yes, obviously lecherous - from the 'director' of their audition.

They remain impassive, almost autonomous, as objects of desire - which is meant to convey the epitome of cool. They do not respond markedly one way or the other (with the exception of the british girl who is fiercely independent, bordering upon overtly hostile - aka a bitch).

Their the jeans are an ordinary part of their life, almost like a second skin rather than a obvious costume in which they perform. The CK brand power does not give them some kind of special shield against the judgements - or even just the wanting gaze - of the camera and its Director.

Neither the worn, almost world-weary found-ness, of this outer skin does nothing more than keep the rest of the world out (warmth, dryness etc); it does not deflect attention away; the brand power offer no special protection from the world.

Indeed the the quiet naturalness of their clothes complements the role of their skin and their beauty - something that is entirely 'there' but yet can not be really possessed (the quintessence of 'look but dont touch).

From a marketing perspective, this distancing technique makes CK an un-brand, neither the subject nor the object of desire -- all the power is internal not external, and it escapes any attempt from the observer to possess it.

Contrast CK's daring brand deportment to Apple's (equally) iconic 'silhouette' adverts for the iPod. In this approach to cool, engagement not detachment is what the using the brand offers to its customers. Yet in both campaigns, it is obvious that the user experience of the brand power is essentially internal. However, what separates these two approaches is that in the Apple advert it is the presence of an external agent (a machine for playing-back) that enables the customer to create and shape his private experience; whereas for CK the presence of an external agent (a recording machine) has no controlling effect on the public experience of appearing before a camera.

From a bottom-line perspective -- um, we are supposed to be talking about the business aspect of the brand, right? ... we dont wont to drift too far off course into a the murky aesthetics of Focault's semiotics or other de-constructionist babble! -- it is important to remember that the success of an advert campaign is best measured by the response of the primary stakeholder (the customer) .... and any claims by others, especially minor peripheral stakeholders in the (youth) marketing equation such as cultural conservatives, should be assessed after we have first determined whether the advert is suitable for target customer.

In other words, not only do they (the critics) not get a veto over what is or is not tasteful, it is also open to debate whether they even get a vote (or if they do, whether it should be even close to equal value as the customers') - after all, why should people who want to jam their own (private) values down other people's throats be afforded as much concern as those people who want to publicly express their own sensibility? (and who want to use their own money to do so!).

The claims that social critics - from both the religious right and the PC left - wish to assert on how individuals and sub-groups express themselves in the marketplace must be very carefully scrutinized lest it undermine the creative energy that an open marketplace (just like an Open Society) needs to flourish.

Yes, all of out private behavior does have a social consequence: but until there is an overwhelming case that demonstrates real concrete harm (rather than just hurt feelings or offended sensibilities), i think most brand managers should feel free to ignore the prudish neuroses that are trying to masquerade as matters of serious cultural import.

What is so appealing about the CK adverts is not that they 'exploit' the sexuality of the beauties in front of the camera: it is precisely the opposite! - namely that these 'kids' remain immune to the temptation to their "fifteen minutes of fame".

The whole aesthetic of these CK basement audition adverts is that the actors DO NOT want to be famous, they dont need it, they are seduced by it - the prospect fame has no hold over them, and the brand power of the jeans is incidental to any attempt to 'perform', to 'appear' cool. Contrast this mood of independence to that of any of Warhrol's films from The Factory, where the sombre moods seem to be driven by the irrational impulse to continue towards self-destruction or at least desolation, on the hope that the next turn of events will some erase or fill the void that has preceded every moment in the characters' lives).

I think that when (marketing) historians looks back on the CK basement ('porno') campaign, it will judge it to be an original step forward in branding: it was a brand that dared to let the power come from the lives of its customers as they actually lived with the product; it was not some glossed up confection that couldnt stand a reality-check even in the make-believe wastelands of suburbia.

And if you dont like seeing the part of life that is uncertain or on-edge, then dont watch the adverts and dont buy the product.

How many letters to the editor do you see complaining about Missionaries come recruiting at your door - NONE.

That's cuz we understand that the True Believers have their own (weird) world, and we tolerate people who are different (even offensive) to us. We dont shout at them or call them names. We just let them be, so they can go on their way to wherever it is that they think they are going.

It would be really nice if discussions about advertising campaigns could be focused on whether they sold the product, not whether they corrupted impressionable minds.

The predominant reason why young person could be "led astray" by any new idea or new experience is because they were a blank slate in the first place! If parents want to worry how the world will influence their precious charges, then they should spend more time trying to be good parents to their own kids before hand, rather than trying to be surrogate parents to everyone else's kids after the fact!

In other words: mind your own business!