A few weeks ago, my friend and I were driving through SoHo when we noticed an attention-grabbing billboard at E. Houston and Lafayette Streets.
(Pictured at left: NOT the billboard in question, by PinkMoose)
In the photograph, four young, gaunt models are enjoying one another; two male models and a female model are groping one another on a couch, and a third male model has his pants undone.
We weren’t really disturbed by the billboard. Says Twitter member @RainaL, “Yeah, I saw it. I didn’t think it was that serious. I’ve seen worse ads.”
However, the billboard has disturbed a lot of people in the neighborhood. Read this or that NY Daily News article, and you will notice that a lot of New Yorkers are offended. Seriously, though? Calvin Klein is known for scandalous advertising. We should expect nothing less from the fashion empire.
What do you think replaced the racy CK ad? Another CK ad. Now that people have started a conversation about the billboard, they are going to be talking even more and telling stories. Is the new CK ad an appropriate replacement? Does it really matter what images hang on billboard space in SoHo?
CK has started a story about their brand. Sure, they are using shock value as an attention-grabbing strategy, but now everyone is telling the Calvin Klein story. And the models that are simply lying around, wasted? They make it seem so effortless.
