Mutt

WHAT'S next in advertising after cat-fighting women wrestling in wet concrete, football fans offering beery paeans to full-figured twins, and streakers shilling shoes with their nether regions pixilated?

Would you believe stars of pornographic films doubling as models in print ads and billboards for a shoe company?

Pony, a brand that cultivates a provocative, maverick image, will promote its athletic footwear and apparel by using performers like Jenna Jameson from movies made by the Vivid Entertainment Group, the nation's leading producer of pornographic films.

"When I grew up in the 80's in Paris, models were the ultimate feminine ideal," said Come Chantrel, vice president and general manager for Pony at the Firm in Beverly Hills, Calif., an artist-management agency with clients like Leonardo DiCaprio and Fred Durst that bought the rights to the brand in 2001. "For the 20-year-old kid, porn stars have kind of replaced what models used to represent."

Sex has long been at the heart of ad pitches, particularly when it comes to campaigns aimed at younger male consumers. A buxom Lillian Russell appeared in ads a century ago endorsing Coca-Cola. More recently, women who have appeared in the pages of Playboy have "crossed over" into mainstream campaigns, including the current cat-fight commercial for Miller Lite beer, sold by SABMiller. The Lite campaign was created by the Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide division of the WPP Group.

Also, in categories like beer, clothing, fragrance and footwear, consumers have shown more tolerance for the use of sexually explicit images in ads than they do when the products are, say, detergents, automobiles or frozen food. Innumerable campaigns for brands like Calvin Klein, Budweiser, Guess, 2(x)ist and Diesel attest to that.

Even so, the Pony campaign, created internally, is indicative of the increasingly frank ways of marketing, or as critics would put it, the increasing coarseness of commercial discourse. In the weeks before the Pony ads are scheduled to appear on billboards and in the March issues of magazines read by younger men like The Source, Blender and XXL, Gucci began running an ad showing an almost naked woman sporting a "G" for Gucci in a particularly intimate place. Yves St. Laurent, meanwhile, introduced an ad for a new scent, M7, with a photograph of a man that displayed full frontal nudity.

The Pony campaign, showing the Vivid actresses posed in slinky dresses and bikinis at various Las Vegas locales, is "a bold step, wild, really out there," said Michael Watrous, president and chief executive at Straightline International in New York, a corporate- and brand-identity consulting company.

Still, he added, "it's probably something I would say is right on target for Pony, a brand marketed to young men and a fashion brand that can `get away with it.' "

"The whole marketing world is moving in this direction," Mr. Watrous said, offering as an example the beer commercials by Foote, Cone & Belding, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, that feature the statuesque twins. Those raucous spots peddle the Coors Light brand sold by the Coors Brewing division of the Adolph Coors Company.

"Coors is a company that not so long ago did commercials that were pretty sedate, with members of the Coors family standing in the countryside," Mr. Watrous said. "Today, you've got these two girls and loud rock music."

No one would label the ads from Pony as sedate, before or after the campaign featuring the "Vivid Girls," as the Vivid actresses are known. Previous Pony ads presented carefully cropped nude photographs of the actress Pamela Anderson, a Firm client. The company also championed efforts by Pete Rose to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame despite his ban from the sport for gambling, and ran ads saluting Jack Tatum, the Oakland Raiders football player known as "the Assassin," whose hit of Darryl Stingley in 1978 left Stingley paralyzed and Tatum demonized.

"It's the rebelliousness factor, a nonconformist attitude," Mr. Chantrel of the Firm said. "By being involved with porn stars, it brings an edge."

But is it an edge that could cut both ways?

The sexual nature of the campaign represents "the application of Calvin Klein to the sweaty foot," said James B. Twitchell, a professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who writes and lectures on the culture of commercialism.

"Attaching a story to a shoe to sell it makes a great deal of sense," Mr. Twitchell said, "but attaching a hot woman to a shoe? God."

On the other hand, "if you want to get the attention of the 18-year-old, mildly addle-pated adolescent, cleavage, and car chases, will do it," he added. "If you have a completely fungible shoe, interchangeable with five or six others, what else can you own?"

The Pony ads, part of a campaign Mr. Chantrel said would have a budget in the seven figures, grew out of promotional parties at nightclubs in cities like Chicago, Miami, New York and Los Angeles. Vivid Girls dropped by the Pony events, while Pony endorsers and Firm artists visited the Vivid events.

"We were talking to the folks at Pony for a long time to see if we could create something interesting," said Steven Hirsch, co-chief executive at Vivid Entertainment in Van Nuys, Calif. "We're always looking for unique ways to showcase our Vivid Girls, and this one was perfect for us."

"We target some of the same people," Mr. Hirsch said of the consumers who buy Pony apparel and footwear and Vivid tapes and DVD's, "and Pony is known for sort of hip campaigns, so it made sense."

Mr. Hirsch is not worried about any backlash. "We have done billboards on Sunset Boulevard several times in the past, for individual movies or the girls, and we've had only positive response," he said. Part of the reason, he added, is because "the adult-entertainment industry has become very mainstream."

There has been a trend toward images associated with pornography making their way into ads, albeit for mostly fashion-oriented products. The most famous, or notorious, example was a 1995 campaign for Calvin Klein Jeans that was attacked by one critic as "a deliberate attempt to invoke the cheap thrill of pornography."

The Klein commercials and print ads featured teenage models, some wearing shorts short enough to display their underwear, posed in settings that resembled cheesily furnished suburban rumpus rooms. The campaign was withdrawn after widespread protests.

More recently, stars of adult films like Gina Lynn are appearing in music videos for singers like Eminem. And some participants in television reality shows like "Survivor" and "Joe Millionaire" were found to have appeared in sexually oriented films.

"You know it's about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll," Mr. Chantrel of the Firm said, "and the sex part is there."From today's New York Times

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Mutt

This is bullshit - the 18 year old kids ain't watching Vivid Videos, if they want to hit that market with porn talent look to the litte sluts who shoot for Anabolic, Diabolic, and Redlight District.

40 year old couples watch Vivid movies on cable and satellite.

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Rochard

We didn't have cable when I grew up as a kid, but sure as anything in high school we always had access to the latest Playboy / Penthouse / Hustler.......

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