TomTom’s new cleavage-filled, ‘banned’ commercial for its strapless heart monitor has been slammed as sexist and objectifying women, but what’s more worthy of derision is how quick the world’s media was to report it as news.
I am not an active person. My definition of exercise is getting up from the computer to make another coffee. So it’s hardly surprising that until this week I had never heard of the TomTom Runner Cardio Watch – a digital watch that monitors your heart rate while you run.
And then this commercial came along:
(Warning: Possibly NSFW, depending on how conservative your workplace is.)
Now thanks to the world’s breast-obsessed, male-dominated media, which dutifully ran this advertisement as a news item, practically everyone has heard of this gadget.
Yes, hundreds of people died when a passenger plane was shot down over Ukraine. Yes, women and children are being bombed to smithereens in Gaza. But, you know… Boobs! Jiggling!
Most news outlets hung their TomTom stories on the dubious hook that the commercial had been banned for being too sexy, although no one bothered to say who had banned it, or why.
That’s probably because it seems no one actually has. There’s no ruling listed on the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority website, or on Dutch equivalent the Stichting Reclame Code in TomTom’s home country of The Netherlands.
Australia’s Advertising Standards Bureau hasn’t banned the ad either, and there are no cases related to TomTom on America’s Advertising Self-Regulatory Council site.
Given that the ad can hardly be described as obscene or sexually graphic, it’s hard to see why anyone would ban it.
But hey, without that angle no one had an excuse to run a 70 second video of a pretty woman bouncing her cleavage to the “Chariots of Fire” theme song; Alexandria Morgan isn’t a celebrity, except to her 57,000 Instagram fans, and no one really cares about a heart rate monitor, even if it is strapless.
But say an ad has been ‘banned for being too sexy’ and watch the medialap it up.
Yes, the TomTom ad objectifies women. Yes, it almost totally marginalises its female (and gay male) consumers by selling exclusively to straight men. All these things are maddening in 2014, particularly in the area of tech advertising, which has been struggling for decades to even recognise women as consumers.
But what is even more maddening is that it seems we are all still so easily manipulated by such an old-fashioned – and, frankly, lame – marketing strategy.
Not only has the media been conned into running the TomTom advertisement as news, we the consumers have also unwittingly been recruited to spread the message by posting the video alongside outraged tweets and ‘they’re just boobs, get over it’ Facebook status updates, and writing blogs about whether it’s sexist or just sexy.
A quick look at TomTom’s YouTube page shows the Alexandria Morgan video is the latest addition to the company’s viral video strategy, which already includes clips of Darth Vader and Yoda recording voices for their in-car GPS system as well as an “almost viral” parody.
Now having racked up (pardon the pun) more than 3 million views in six days, largely powered by the media storm surrounding the ‘banned’ controversy, the Morgan video is set to become the company’s most popular ever.
It’s certainly done much better than their last ad for the same product:
Yep, sex sells – but sex badged as news sells even better.