Hasta La Creative!

Ad agency The Bull-White House’s “Cancer Sutra” campaign was a provocative idea in search of a sponsor—until Stupid Cancer, a nonprofit dedicated to helping young adults with cancer, signed on.

Central to the effort, which coyly suggests you can spot signs of cancer while having sex, is a series of colorful posters, designed by Brooklyn artist John Solimine, showing couples in the act. Sales of the posters will raise money for Stupid Cancer, and Bull-White House hopes to turn some of them into wild postings. There’s also an e-book, website and video.

Agency founder Matthew Bull discovered Solomine on Behance.net and was drawn in particular to “Strongman Love,” an illustration of a man with his arm wrapped around a woman that Solimine made about four years ago. That visual style defined the new campaign. (There are lots more images here.)

As Bull explained, “Curvaceousness, hard angles, a playful approach to negative space—all of these were critical in differentiating the Cancer Sutra from any other Kama Sutra we’d seen before.”

brightcove.createExperiences();

AdFreak asked Solimine about the making of the posters.

When did you first get the call for this?
It was late last year when I got a call from Bull-White House. It was funny because upfront, from the call, I had no idea what the project was.

What was the initial brief?
They started off with the statistic that a huge amount of people who find out they have cancer actually discover it before, during or after sex. … When you tell people about it and use that as an intro, people are like, “Wait a second.” Just the words cancer and sex in the same sentence—probably you’ve never heard that before, you know?

Why did you want to do this?
The scope of it, the size of it. They said, “We’re going to need between 20 and 40 illustrations” at the beginning of the whole thing. And just the subject matter I thought was great. When it was pitched to me, I was like, “Wow, I’ve never heard that idea before.” So, I found it unique. And I’ve had family members who were stricken with cancer.

What inspired the look and feel of your posters?
An old poster that I had done for Fab, that website fab.com. … They would partner with various artists and have that artist come up with half-dozen or so unique pieces that were just for the Fab sale. And then you could sell anything else you wanted of your previous work on there. But one of the posters I created for my Fab sale (“Strongman Love”)—Bull-White House had seen that on my website and they kind of pulled that out stylistically and said, “We really like what you’re doing with this one.”

What was it about that poster?
I don’t think they wanted it to be anatomically [correct] or lean too much on that. They wanted it to be playful, have interesting body shapes and not go for Ken and Barbie or Penthouse and Playgirl, that kind of thing, and not have it be too porny in any way.

It must have been tricky to straddle that line.
At that first meeting, just to clarify what we were going to be doing, I was like, “So, I’m going to be drawing people actually having sex in various ways, right?” And I think in the beginning everybody though that yeah, you are, and it’s going to get pretty graphic—like there’s really no way around it for what we’re talking about.

But then when we actually started doing the illustrations, working on them and being collaborative, we all realized that there was a way that we were going to be able to pull it off without actually showing anything, which I actually think became the trick of it, like, “OK, how can we show pretty graphic descriptions of sex without actually showing anything at all, really?” I think all you really see graphically are like two or three nipples maybe. So, I think the suggestion of it is the strength of it.

I could see this on T-shirts. Could you?
Oh, yeah, definitely. I think there are a lot of cool applications. They were jokingly talking about turning the pattern into sheets, pajamas or something like that.

I am loving the porno wars fast food company’s have introduced into our advertising. While only a few have been spotted here in our U.S. of A, international Advertising is running ramped with the integration of food and sex.

I’m not offended — as a woman, a professional, and an advertiser. In fact, I am completely digging this. When times get desperate, living organisms seek whatever means necessary to survive. Just take a look at any of the popular “survival” shows. So, why should advertising be the exception. Hasn’t advertising always been the medium to push the envelope, to blur the line or whatever cliché you want to insert. It has. I say: “Jolly good fun!”

Starting from the Quizno’s Marlboro inspired sandwich all the way to the “put it in me” line from… wait, that’s Quizno’s too! Wow. Nothing like Subway’s major competitor to recommend sex and smoking as they compete against Jared followers. That, of course, is probably all he needed: to get laid and have a smoke (the century-old diet plan). Quizno’s isn’t the only company targeting raging hormones, as Hardee’s are Carls Jr. are also contributing more than their share of sex to advertising.

We’re so desperate to hold on to the growing competition in market share, that soon, we’re just going to show completely nude women sitting with a foot-long Subway sandwich between her legs offering a “quick and cheap” lunch option “any way you want it.”

In case you’ve missed the latest release, Burger King has decided to step up its game in the fast food wars. Since they’ve completely lost the family market to McDonald’s, they just figured they would go the completely opposite route and appeal to the sex starved males. That’s a BIG market, and why not capitalize on it? I think it’s smart of BK to restructure their targeting because they’ve truly been fighting a losing battle for a long time. You can’t beat McDonald’s. You just can’t. Let them have their family. Eventually, these kids are going to grow up and become sex starved teens and young adults, which is exactly whom The King is targeting!

Rena Prizant is a Copywriter, Ad Creative and mammal in the Chicago area, professionally word playing since 2002. Rena writes smart, engaging, dynamic copy for a broad range of mediums and industries; and loves helping start-up’s get their branding feet. Visit www.RenaPrizant.com or Twitter WriteLeft.

Craigslist may face criminal action in South Carolina unless the online classifieds service stops running ads the state says promote prostitution and pornography, the state attorney general’s office said Thursday.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster probably never guessed that his name would be involved with murder, a sociopath, and angry Americans. After all, he simply ran a classified ad website…what kind of trouble could he get into?

Well, he may spend time in the big house if he is not careful…although it is highly doubtful. However, he has taken his share of legal and  public flogging, so much so that he has responded via the Craigslist blog: 

“When critics rush to tar craigslist as especially dangerous, it’s important to put things in perspective,” he writes. “Craigslist users have posted more than 1.15 billion classified ads to date, easily 1000x the combined total ever posted to the print publications involved in all of these ‘print ad murders.’”

In its “terms of use” section, Craigslist says it is not responsible for ads on its sites. Which is basically the same as the disclaimer that smoking can kill you on the outside of the cigarette box.

Sex on Craigslist is not hard to locate: Just go to the “personals” and look for the link that says “misc. romance and casual encounters.” Now it is true that Craigslist is not the first public “portal” that has been used for people trying to hook up for sexual activity…MySpace, Chat Rooms, AOL…they have all been exploited for sexual purposes. With any service that is used to put two people together that have never met, there is a good chance that the person you meet may not be the person that was portrayed. It’s one of the pitfalls of personal “online” branding: we have the ability to be who we want to be.  

Mr. Buckmaster does have a valid point in that predators have found prey via other methods, and not just Craigslist. However, when newspapers used to run classified advertising, there were no pictures of naked women, no promises of sexual gratification-and if there were, they were veiled as something else entirely.

It’s really nobody’s fault anymore. Craigslist is just another company that is not responsible for the indirect damage they’ve enabled. The CEOs of banks, automakers, mortgage lenders…it’s not their fault, either. Let the public beware! After all, they were just trying to make a little money. So some people died. Other’s lost their life savings. It’s not our fault.

However, as the world becomes interconnected, some sort of responsibility must be taken by those that provide the means. We assume that others are as ethical (for better or worse) as we are, and it is not too much to ask for a little corporate responsibilty, as well. If someone was hurt on your property although being warned prior to the fact that danger existed, there would still be culpability inolved for having something of danger exposed to the public.  

It’s not that I think Craigslist is guilty; rather, I feel that they should take some of the responsibility. Yet, the fact that Craigslist has entirely blamed everyone but themselves, and has even researched other murders that have happened via classified ads seems a bit caustic and a little too casual. Luckily, the killer was caught quickly…maybe at the beginning of a serial killing spree. What would Craigslist have done if there were ten murders?  
 

Jeff Louis: Strategic Media Planner, Project Manager, and New Business Coordinator. His passion is writing, contributing to BMA as well as freelancing. He’d love to hear from you: linkedin.com/in/jefflouis or twitter.com/jlo0312.

There are very very few artists whose work i admire as much as Nathalie Djurberg’s. Actually there’s only one and she’s a woman too. Her name is Gabríela Fridriksdóttir. These artists create universes which are dark and mysterious. But there stops my desire to compare one with the other.

Nathalie Djurberg, We are not two, we are one, 2008

I don’t know what happened to Djurberg since the first time i saw her work, at the 2006 Berlin Biennale but her twisted tales have grown crueler and more menacing .

Nathalie Djurberg, Once removed on my mother’s side, 2008

The protagonists of Djurberg’s stop-motion animations are hand-modeled plasticine puppets. If this reminds you of some cute tv programme you followed as a kid then let me crush any nostalgia you might have. Djurberg clearly didn’t see the same children animations as you and i. Her animations show human beings at their most crass, psychopath, sadistic and often disarming behaviour. The macabre atmosphere of her animations almost never come with words, just a languid and fidgety music composed by Hans Berg.

Nathalie Djurberg, Caveman Mike, 2008

Nathalie Djurberg, Caveman Mike, 2008

It often starts well. In one video, a mother plays in the bedroom with her kids. In a second video, three beautiful girls get naked to take a bath in the pond. A third film shows a pretty eskimo girl walking on thick ice. After a few seconds, the children start disappearing inside their mummy’s vagina turning her voluptuous, elastic and Fellini-esque body into a monster creature with multiple arms and legs, the girls chase and burn the young lad who was peeping at their nudity and the eskimo does what any eskimo is supposed to do: she harpoons a walrus, remove its bowels. Only that she won’t eat it. She sews herself inside the animal’s skin and quietly leaves for a crawl on the icefield.

Nathalie Djurberg, It’s the mother, 2008

Nathalie Djurberg, It’s the mother, 2008

The videos address a fair amount of intense issues such as violence, sexuality, sadism, cruelty, death and brutality. Made all the more upsetting by the fact that the artist messes with our moral codes and would never point to us where is the right and where is the wrong. She takes us on a roller-coaster and all we can to is try and keep track of our landmarks.

Nathalie Djurberg, Turn into me, 2008

Nathalie Djurberg, Turn into me, 2008

Nathalie Djurberg, Johnnny, 2008

The artists filled the exhibiting space of Fondazione Prada with models that work as counterparts to her videos, there’s a huge sprouting potato, the plump bum of a woman, a little house . These models become pavilions inside which the videos are projected.

The Potato (detail). Photo Attilio Maranzano

Das Waldhaeuschen, 2008. Photo Attilio Maranzano

You have until June 1 to check out the show. Previously at the Fondazione Prada in Milan: Tom Sachs.

Portrait of Nathalie Djurberg. Photo by Hans Berg

All images courtesy of the artist and Fondazione Prada, Milan.