American Apparel’s banned ads are a shocking example of marketing
The latest American Apparel ad to be banned shows a young woman leaning through the window of a car, showing her underwear to camera.
I say latest because it’s the most recent in a long line of American Apparel ads to have met with the same fate. This time the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) said: “We considered the ads had the effect of inappropriately sexualising school-age girls and were therefore offensive and irresponsible for that reason too.”
If they hadn’t been banned for bad taste they should have been banned for bad marketing.
American Apparel was built on a platform of fairness. Their T-shirts and hoodies were made by workers earning a living wage in Los Angeles, California and not by slave-labour in the Far East. “Sexy sweats without the sweatshop” as ABC News put it.
But despite the ethical approach, they also used shock value for cheap PR. A quick search on Google reveals a long list of their other controversial advertising images showing too young women in too grown-up poses, usually in their own bedrooms. The home video style of photography gives the shots exactly the right voyeuristic feeling to attract the censor’s eye.
To start with it worked – or something did. In 2005 their three-year growth was 525%.
But then they hit the buffers. As it stands today, they haven’t made a profit in 16 out of the last 17 quarters and the shares have fallen 84% over five years.
Maybe everyone just got bored? The most powerful word in marketing is new and yet American Apparel used the same old tactic over and over again. As Time put it: “Being offensive only works the first 100 times.”
Another problem could be that the ads are sexist and yet the range is aimed predominantly at women.
And then there’s Dov.
Dov Charney founded the company and was responsible for all of the marketing. He has received multiple accusations of unwanted sexual conduct and was fired this June. Reading through his crimes and misdemeanours is like reading a real life version of Boogie Nights – funny to begin with (walking the shop floor in his Y-fronts) sad and nasty by the end (having oral sex while being interviewed). With this backstory the brand very quickly stopped being sexy and started being sleazy.
Do shock tactics still work? Yes, but it’s become much harder. Charities with small budgets can still jolt us into action – just watch Ed Morris’s film for Cybersmile. What’s changed is we now live in a real world. Isis videos arrive on our screens next to commercials, American Apparel lives in the same universe – and on the same tablets – as Operation Yewtree. Real is why these days we’re more interested in Dove than Dov.
This may explain the success of Benetton’s Colours campaign. Instead of trying to get banned, the advertising and highly influential magazine simply holds a mirror up to the world – and if the images get a few Daily Mail readers clutching at their pearls, so be it. Some ads have been banned but that seems to be a by-product rather than the primary aim. The work has always seemed a bit disconnected from the bright, fluffy jumpers they sell in store. But it’s been running for over 20 years and the jumpers are still very much with us.
Some things don’t change. Brands that want headlines will always court controversy. And sex sells, so there will always be marketing directors who want to show knickers. But right now, I think we’ve all moved on.
David Prideaux is the executive creative director at Publicis Chemistry
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