Clever! As part of their effort to sell homo-inspired Tom of Finland cologne, some ingenious marketing types launched an international ad campaign incorporating something every gay loves: a phallus!
The drawings of topless men started appearing next to lamp posts, bollards and pipes in San Francisco earlier this month.Others have appeared in the Marais area of Paris.
The posters have been arranged with the street furniture to leave passers-by with a none-too-subtle image of masculinity.
The drawings have been placed as part of an advertising campaign for Tom of Finland, a new aftershave from French fragrance firm Etat Libre d'Orange.
The scent is named after the homoerotic artist known as Tom of Finland, who was famed for his heavily muscled and sexualized drawings of gay men.
All the posters used in the campaign, which was devised by the Ogilvy agency, are based on his work.
The Tom of Finland fragrance is designed to smell like "a guy coming out of a shower" according to Antoine Lie, who created it for Etat Libre d'Orange.
Hmm, when we think Tom of Finland, we don't think "clean." But maybe that's just us…
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Yeah, I had to stop for a second to catch onto the "suggestion" of how the posters were placed in the photo above.
It became really obvious when I checked out the article + accompanying photo gallery at the source site.
Hate Tom of Finland. Especially the Nazi references of swatikas, the boots the riding crops. What does the cologne smell like, the ovens at Dauchau?
Dachau concentration camp.
Thanks Fredo, I would have missed the Street furniture if you hadn't pointed it out! I like some of Tom of Finland stuff, most of it is way overdone, hypermasculine, some of it ridiculous. Who has a thing has big as a leg?
And the Nazi stuff is just disgusting beyond words, but I thought that was long ago and a definite small minority of his work.
haha
No problem, Jaro. I always found the absurd level of macho in his work to be kind of sexy. It was the ideal male body, drawn in comic proportions that we'd never see in real life. Funny enough, Tom of F's stuff comes to mind whenever I see Titpig, the porn actor.
I guess that was the appeal of Tom of Finland. The men he depicted were bigger than life. The same holds true for Hun, Etienne and several other gay artists.