July 14, 2006, - 1:23 pm
Company Uses “Gay Friends” To Sell Women on Shampoo
By
Men, the next time your female significant other asks you, “Does this make me look fat?” she doesn’t really care what you think (so long as you make the mistake of saying the accurate answer: yes).
Unless you’re gay.
Unilever, the consumer products company is using gay men to sell their shampoo, “Sunsilk,” to American women. According to Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal,
in what will be one of its biggest [product]launches, [Unilever] has hired three actors to play a girl’s best gay friends. It will position them as style experts and they will write advice columns in magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Star, appear as commentators on television, and diagnose consumers’ hair problems.
Unilever marketers, after quizzing hundreds of women, settled upon the characters as the best way to target 20-something women. . . . Women admired the “best gay friend” character on TV shows like “Sex and the City” and “Will and Grace”. . . .
Sunsilk marketers went shopping, bowling and even bar-hopping with more than 500 young women for research. From the conversations, they realized that the women loved the gay characters on TV shows.
The company is spending $200 million for this silly advertising campaign. Perhaps, they didn’t notice that both the vapid shows cited above are now off the air and in stale, old re-run hell.
We don’t recommend buying Unilever products, aside from this absurd marketing moment. Unilever also owns and produces “Ben & Jerry’s” ice cream, in which far-lefties Ben & Jerry still have financial stakes. ‘s endless PR tours.
Tags: Cindy Sheehan, Cosmopolitan, Sex and the City, silly advertising campaign, Star, Unilever, USD, Wall Street Journal, Will and Grace
Don’t buy it because they have fags on T.V. or because of Ben and Jerry?
KOAJaps on July 18, 2006 at 3:14 pm