Morning Update: Underwear brand’s genital juggling; Playboy axes nude pics; Twitter sheds jobs as it struggles for growth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYOGFaIC3co
Ad Week: Guys would look a lot less perverted if they just had better underwear
Adjusting the packaging around your frank and beans is a timeless annoyance for men, some of whom handle the process subtly … while others don’t.
Underwear brand Tommy John and agency Preacher capture this daily plight of genital juggling with a fun spot spanning multiple decades. Men attempt to shift their undies in public or in the workplace, with predictably poor results (especially for the TV weatherman).
Sure, public discomfort isn’t the most original idea for an underwear ad, but the sheer breadth of scenarios dreamed up for the spot makes it worth a watch and a few good laughs. Also, it’s hard to imagine a better tagline than, “When you’re uncomfortable, we’re all uncomfortable.”
Digiday: Now with 100 per cent fewer nudes
This is clearly no longer your father’s Playboy.
The venerable men’s magazine has announced a significant pivot: Beginning next March, the print edition of Playboy will cease to run photos of nude women. It is a digital sign of the times that the Internet has more than met the demand for photos of naked people (and so very much more). And while the magazine will still run glamorous and suggestive photos of women, they will no longer be nude.
The house that Hef built has been a throwback for more than a generation now, a relic of the “Mad Men” era where casual sexism was de rigueur. There is still plenty of sexism out there, but with porn for every proclivity a mere click away, Playboy’s chief content officer Cory Jones decided it was time to put on something a little more work-appropriate.
The Drum: Twitter reacts negatively to Playboy magazine’s ‘no nudity’ policy
In light of Playboy’s announcement that it plans to ditch ‘passé’ female nudity, Twitter has erupted with mentions of the provocative magazine.
While circulation of the publication has slumped from 5.6 million to just 800,000 since the 1970s, the brand’s popularity on social media has seen a spike today clocking up 18,000 posts on Twitter, according to Brandwatch.
Techcrunch: Facebook tests video feed to sidestep Youtube with friendly discovery
Facebook is where you watch videos you weren’t looking for. And now it’s looking to supercharge discovery through friends via a slew of new feature tests including a dedicated Video feed with separate channels for clips shared by friends, Pages you Like, Trending videos on Facebook, clips you’ve Saved, or videos you’ve already watched.
The test sees the Videos button replace the Messenger button at the bottom of the iOS app’s home screen, though this test is only showing to a few people, and probably wouldn’t be made so prominent in a final version.
The Guardian: Twitter slashes global workforce as it struggles for growth
Twitter is making up to 336 employees, or about 8% of its global workforce, redundant in the first major move since co-founder Jack Dorsey was named chief executive.
The redundancies will come mainly in the product and engineering functions, the company said.
“We feel strongly that engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce,” Dorsey said in a letter to staff on Tuesday. “And the rest of the organisation will be streamlined in parallel.”
Ad Age: Why those little white lies the ad industry tells itself aren’t going to help fix anything
When you work in or around an industry long enough, it’s hard not to get caught up in groupthink and biases, or to not get defensive when it comes under attack.
In the past two print issues of Advertising Age, I’ve used my space here (and in the editor’s letter) to defend the general concept of advertising and to go so far as to suggest that industry players sue ad blockers out of existence.
I stand by those arguments. Advertising makes quality content affordable for the masses and it also sells things. Digital ad blocking, as it exists, is a form of extortion, not a form of consumer protection. So when someone hits you, you hit back twice as hard.
