In most major European cities, the unwary visitor will be assailed by overtly sexual imagery which would be considered beyond the pale in the United States.
In Austria, in a commercial for shoe retailer Humanic, a female sales clerk sends a female customer into orgasmic ecstacy when she places a shoe on. In Holland, FA shower gel features a series of topless women rubbing their soapy breasts, and in prime time.
Bjorn Borg Underwear, in a series of recent ads, challenged European women to get naked and "F--k for the Future," since statistically fewer Europeans are being born. Our guerrilla marketing sister agency, BlueberryFrog, recently developed a concept for a new perfume that would brand metaphorical landmarks -- such as train tunnels, train engines, and even mountain tops.
It is ironic that probably the most consistently sexy pan-European advertising over the last twenty years or so has been for Levi's, that most American of brands. Ever since the underwear model Nick Kamen pulled his jeans down in a laundromat to the soulful warble of Marvin Gaye's Heard It Through the Grapevine, Levi's has been associated with some of the most consistently sexy advertising in Europe. So if Americans think Europeans have a liberated attitude to sex, Europeans return the compliment by looking to America for iconic sexual brands.
But just as the American Southern Baptist will have a different perspective from the seen-it-all-before New Yorker, it would be a mistake to assume that in Europe there is one standard of taste that applies everywhere. Some ideas are cross border others are not; the trick is knowing the difference. Playboy magazine, to provide one obvious example, has to be extremely careful in the choice of cover girl for each of its 16 European editions. The coquettish brunette on the cover of the Paris edition would not shift many copies of the magazine in Hungary, where a pneumatic blonde is chosen to grace the front cover most months.
It would be a mistake to assume that in Europe there is one standard of taste that applies everywhere.
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The limits of acceptability don't just vary dramatically with geography, but can change rapidly within a culture in a short space of time. Take body hair. For years it has been the case that while Southern European ladies didn't "groom," in Northern Europe much the same attitude was taken as in the US.
But body hair appears to be the latest taboo to be tackled by youth marketing brands. On the cover of the latest issue of POP, one of the UK's most trend-setting fashion magazines, the pretty model on the cover is defiantly unshaven in the underarm region.
All this could be a reaction to the glossy perfection we are used to seeing from brands and image makers, but having the front to use armpit hair in this way certainly gets you noticed - and suggests a rebelliousness of spirit that many brands would love to have attributed to them.
Meanwhile, hair has been sprouting in unusual places in the new Microsoft Xbox campaign. A bar of soap with hairs on it is a cryptic image which is only partly explained by the cryptic message "play more." But for the teenage boys who are the target for the advertising, the coded reference to you-know-what couldn't be clearer.
Sometimes different European cultures adopt attitudes that a US visitor might find surprising. The French have a reputation for taking themselves, and their sex lives, very seriously. However, their advertising suggests they like to laugh at the practical aspects of sex.
For example, in a recent commercial for a brand of plastic gloves, Mapa, the classic boy-meets-girl scenario is interrupted when the couple realizes they don't have a condom. The naked boy retreats to the kitchen and finds a pair of super-thin dishwashing gloves. The girl starts laughing when, back turned to the camera, he returns to the bedroom. The tagline "Feel what you touch" is superimposed on a picture of the glove with one finger missing.
There is more chance of getting away with risque material, and less chance of causing offense, when the message is humorous in intent.
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The Microsoft and Mapa examples are evidence of a simple truth that probably holds as true in the US as Europe -- that there is more chance of getting away with risque material, and less chance of causing offense, when the message is humorous in intent.
Sometimes, even in Europe, the things that cause an upset are not the things you think they might be. Take the case of the poster image of a pregnant woman's belly, used to promote a new advertising school in Malmo, Sweden. The principal of the school defended the image as relevant to the theme, "the birth of a child to the parent organization."
But watchdogs complained that this was a sexist and irresponsible use of the image, and filed an official complaint. Who would have suspected that in laid-back, let-it-all-hang-out Sweden, home of the mixed sauna, a little nudity would cause such a stir?
Sex is still alive in Europe. And on a continent where image and attitude are often more important than product or price, the sensual and the sexy remain a large part of the emotional mix used to seduce consumers into buying stuff.
Europeans consumers are different than Americans. The lesson? Get it wrong and your brand will stand out like a donkey at an orgy. Only less popular.
Scott Goodson is co-founder and creative partner of StrawberryFrog, an independent ad agency that specializes in building brands for international clients from its office in Amsterdam. Since its launch in March 1999, StrawberryFrog has worked on multi-country assignments for Levi Strauss & Co., Sprint, Nokia, Pfizer, United Pan Communications, Credit Suisse, Ford Motor Co., Microsoft Corp., Smart Car, Xerox and Motorola. Special thanks to Gavin MacDonald, StrawberryFrog's head of strategic planning, for his help in preparing this essay.
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