Plug is spark of genius
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It's as direct as a keg party come-on. The
"Wanna hook up?" it asks.
Some might look askance at the company's use of a term that usually describes casual sex to sell cable boxes. They might think that the city's 250,000 college students are already having plenty of meaningless sex even without a corporate behemoth's encouragement. Critics might complain that, even though the campaign is directed at students over 18, there are plenty of tweens riding those buses and trains, absorbing the double entendre, and that this is not a good thing.
Pah. Comcast is just taking it to the kids, right where they live, in lingo they can understand.
"These students are a significant segment of the economy and an important part of the business," says spokesman Jim Hughes. "We need to be creative to stand out to this important audience . . . to speak in a way that is relevant to them."
Hughes avoids talking about the obvious sexual come-hither. He helpfully explains that hooking up is all about connecting wires and cable boxes and "hooking up with friends and family by phone."
And the kids, he says, are really into the way the company is marketing its Performance Plus High Speed Internet with PowerBoost®: "They find it a creative and relevant message that pertains to our voice, television, and high-speed services."
Still, some people just don't get it.
Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne for example. The two local academics just came out with a book called "So Sexy So Soon," about the way our culture sexualizes children. "They're targeting younger kids than ever," Kilbourne says. "The cumulative impact of this stuff is that they're surrounded by a barrage of sexual innuendo and there is this desensitization that goes on."
She says this Comcast campaign is another example of that.
The authors cite a study by the American Psychological Association showing that teens who are sexualized too early tend to have lower self-esteem, difficulty forming healthy relationships, and even poor powers of concentration.
Lighten up, ladies!
We should applaud Comcast. Because by selling its cable services using a sexual proposition, the company is eschewing the pathetic subtlety that typifies so many other marketing pitches - like those old Coors ads with the pin-up twins. There are no bikinis between us and the good stuff. No attempt to place a veil between product and tantalizing pitch. This is refreshingly straightforward. They've taken us to the next logical stage in our evolution.
Wanna hook up? It's beautiful. It drops the pretense like a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch jeans.
And if you don't know what that looks like, head down to Cross Street in the North End. There, on a huge billboard, stands a headless, shirtless Abercrombie babe, his chiseled torso filling practically the entire frame. A shard of his jeans are just visible at the bottom, pulled so low that they reveal what appears to be an extensive and, one can only assume, extremely painful bikini wax.
Abercrombie & Fitch ads are not about the clothes. They are all about the sex, and proud of it. In fact, the company is so all about the sex that at some of its actual stores, it stopped displaying any evidence of its shrunken, distressed, preppy outfits in the windows some time ago, covering them with wood blinds instead.
This works very well. The three dimly-lighted floors of Abercrombie's store in Quincy Market were throbbing on a recent day. Some customers surrounded by the immense posters of models in falling-off jeans looked to be about 12.
Comcast would love to get its hands on the Abercrombie crowd. And Abercrombie stores - with their huge windows devoid of clothing - would be prime real estate for ad content.
Hey Abercrombie, hey Comcast: Wanna hook up?
Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. Her e-mail is abraham@globe.com.
