As you have learned in the part 1 of this serie of article, I continued to work with my advertising group despite not being enrolled into the course anymore.
At first, we wanted to build our ad targeting people of Asian roots living in Canada. We thought we could build a solid campaign, print ad and creative theme around that and that it would be easy to reach 1,500 new users (sold units) given this target market.
We started off with a very funny idea; to use Godzilla in our ad and try to create appeal toward the exposed Asian people who would obviously know him, recognize him and possibly favour the ad because of the icon appeal.
As we were very unsure of how much potential this concept would have and how well would the Asian-Canadians respond to this type of imagery, we went to see the teacher seeking for guidance. Not only was he painful to talk to, he would never answer to a question straight and would always feel us dumb for not understanding what he meant and wanted in the paper. It was incredibly frustrating and anoying! The teacher gave us a cue though: our target market was incomplete and unlikely and we needed to find a better one and implement our research.
And that's basically what we did but at first, we didn't know where to start from. And that's when one of the girls -Juliya- said we could target gay men? Or like another specific market like that but do in-depth research about their behaviour, geographic coverage, age range, income and psychographic status. Unsurprisingly, I found that idea very inviting and agreed on the spot. We then decided to target young gay men (my idea) even though their income is usually low since they whether live with their parents and don't work, live with'em and work part-time or work full-time but with a minimum-wage job.
We checked Mitsubishi's car models of the year and wanted to advertise one of the models instead of advertising the brand directly. We agreed that the RVR was a sureshot since there's a very high demand for light trucks in Canada and also because its features are young, practical and that the car could be used for both urban driving or rural crisscrossing.
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| Mitsubishi RVR car model |
We decided that the light blue color would be the one featured in the ad as it looks electric and also soft so the gay might be likely to enjoy it. As we were discussing about what kind of ad we'd build for the gays, I instantly came up with a very raw and sexual idea: "Presenting the Mitsubishi RVR, for a bumpy ride..."!!! LOLLL the girls went laughing like crazy and couldn't handle it whatsoever! I was laughing too and thought I had just coined the funniest slogan of the class! We decided to keep it and make an extended use of it. The girls said that if they'd ever see an advertising with such an obvious sexual allusion, they'd be rolling on the subway floor, laughing!
Of course, you might acknowledge the term "bumpy ride" from Mohombi's song. As we wouldn't want to pay Mohombi an extra-fee for copyrights use, we didn't use "it's gonna be a bumpy ride" but "for a bumpy ride", which is more simple and short. Evidently, who talks targeting gay men implies a bit of homoerotic Art and gay lifestyle. I, Mr. Sex-Addict, didn't want to simply target them in a friendly, politically-correct matter. I thought we could use a steamy picture of a male model and place a smaller pic of the car somewhere on his body with the bumpy ride tagline.
The girls thought my ideas were scatty and insane but agreed to them (how weird lol) and said it was a good idea since it's true that sex sells and that it sells even more among the gay community! I'm sorry to say it that way, I know it won't help us build a better image of our community and might even increase the number of stereotypes and preconceptions people have of the gays. But let's be honest here; it's not completely false to claim that young gay men like to go out in the gay village, log on gay chats and even drop at the nearby sauna and all of this because they're looking for sex. This doesn't mean that gay men only think about sex, I think it's just an illustration of the kind of efforts we need to deploy to meet other gay men and to accumulate the chances of finding Mr. Right to whether start a friendship, a relationship or to achieve intercourse.
Beforehand, we had no clue about if we could use a photo taken somewhere and therefore, feature a well-known model or if we had to make the ad ourselves, starting from scratch and featuring a friend or a drawing. After the girls had asked the teacher about it, I thought about some sexy male models that I already knew and searched for hot photospreads that could be nice to use for our print ad.
As I discovered Dolce und Gabbana model Chad White since two years and have been a fan right from the beginning, I automatically thought of him as the lead model in the ad. I tried to find raunchy photos of him on the web that displayed his rack, his crotch and his "washboards". I found a photoshoot that appeared in Arena Magazine in February 2008. In the photoshoot, we can see Chad in a scantily-clad manner (shirtless and wearing underwear). One of the photos caught my attention more than the other ones.
What's interesting to note is that no matter how hot, good-looking, sexy and masculine this guy is, it seems like most girls would rather see him in a more classy way; not too naked and without all the sexual tension down under. By this I mean that the three girls working with me said "OMG! This is too much! It's like porn!!!". But honestly, most gay guys (all of'em) would be salivating in front of it and would have no objection about it! That's mainly why I believe we can target gay men with much more raw and sexual ads than women, no matter gay, straight or bi. That's because men generally have a higher sex drive than women.
We used the hottest photo (the one that I preferred lol), added the tagline and the Mitsubishi front to it and the result was pretty cool and professional and looked just like I had envisioned it:
I don't know what you guys think of it but I'm more-than-satisfied with it and by this I mean both as a tempting picture that makes me horny but as a good advertising as well! Since I had dropped the course, I could work with the team to do the project, research and type it but I couldn't present the project in front of the class (oral presentation) and I wouldn't have wanted to do it anyway since I wouldn't have been graded. What is so funny is that not only is the print ad overly sexual and graphic, the team had to present it to the teacher and the class!!!!! Imagine how funny it would've been to see that lol!! My friend Mike was in that class with us and accordingly, attended my team's presentation and said he laughed the whole because it was too hilarious for words lol!
