There’s a pretty concrete set of rules for making an advert for perfume or aftershave.

Your advert has to feature a man women will find attractive (this is probably actually to satisfy the “men want to be him” criteria but few straight men are secure enough to admit another man is attractive let alone that they want to be him) or a woman that men will find really attractive (as men are typically less picky then women when it comes to sexual partners so the female character has to be really, really hot for men to remember her face/the name of your perfume).

Once you’ve got your cast members they must then be set some abstract task that in no way relates to aftershave/perfume (because other than a shot of a whale being slaughtered and it’s blubber being boiled, what else actually does relate to aftershave/perfume?) which ultimately ends up with the man/woman in the arms of the woman/man.

Then you need to have the right music: dark and brooding for aftershave; light and airy for perfume.

Finish it all off with a Hollywood voice over delivery of the (always) one word name. For perfume we’re talking Covet, Diamonds or the slightly edgier Insolence. Aftershave usually struggle to get beyond the “Pour Homme” but occasionally there’s an Attitude, a Pestilence or and Erection.

OK, I’ve made those last two up but you get the drift.

The Lacoste Pour Homme (Pour Homme? *Yawn*) advert takes things slightly different though.

Yes, there’s the abstract scene (kicking a pillow around). Yes, there’s the right music. Yes, there’s an attractive male.

But wait…

Where’s the woman? And why’s that guy in the nude?

izgrant, who submitted this bad ad, wonders:

“Notice that in these adverts they wouldn’t pick someone like Rik Waller to go flabbing around booting a pillow. Or Lisa Riley to go running around the streets of New York after some cock (referring to the DKNY advert there).

At least that way it would be repulsively funny.”

OK, so we all know that they don’t have Rik Waller and Lisa Riley in the adverts because they want to create an emotion of desire in our pathetic little minds but, honestly, who is the naked guy kicking the pillow hoping to attract?

Answers on a post card only, please.

Just How Bad is this Ad?

(15 votes, average: 3.87 out of 5)