FCUK Advertising Not Yet Banned In Boston

The company happens to have two outlets in Boston and the mayor, Thomas W. Menino, just doesn’t think that kind of advertising fits in with his city. “Don’t use violence against each other to sell a product,” he said. “That’s unconscionable!”

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FCUK says its ad campaign is a “fight” between fashion and style – “fashion fades, style is eternal” – if that sounds familiar it’s a long-time quote from French designer Yves Saint Laurent.

FCUK’s web site proudly shows the advertising campaign. With just opera as its audio, the video shows two women is a very violent Kung-Fu type battle, tearing off parts of their outfits, throwing each other across the room, hair pulling, slapping, getting soaked with water, one trying to drown the other, but they make up with a long passionate kiss at the end suggesting that neither style or fashion wins.

It’s all too much for Boston. “The ad campaign both connects and promotes negative images of women and violence, certainly not how we want girls and young women to see themselves, and most definitely not a path we want them to follow,” the mayor said.

Not that the campaign has gone down well in the UK where one might think the advertising attitudes are a bit more liberal.

Advertising posters were plastered on London buses and taxis but sales did not improve – clothes retailers in general had a bad Easter but the thinking in London is that FCUK did worse than others because the advertising turned people off. The company’s share price has fallen around 50% in the past two years due to poor sales.

With initials like FCUK to work with the company has taken its acronym as far as it could – especially on T-shirts. But what brought smirks in 1990s became a bit tiring this century and the company eventually dropped its FCUK logo from advertisements in 2005. The T-shirts were often too much for the American market where Christian groups pressured department stores to remove some of the more suggestive ones from their shelves,

Even in the UK the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has in the past forced the company to pull ads. The current campaign launched in February has already drawn more than 100 complaints from viewers and has been referred to the ASA.

One FCUK executive, operations director Neil Williams, admits the ads had not been as successful as the company had hoped. “People saw the adverts and some people didn’t like them but most people did. Overall, we thought we got a good reaction to it.” But did it produce the desired results? “Maybe not because the figures weren’t what we wanted them to be.”

Indeed the British media is full of quotes by people saying the ads were a turn-off. A financial analyst is quoted as saying, “I personally had no inclination to go anywhere near a store after I saw that advert.”

Clothes retailers are having a tough time in the UK as competition has hardened. Miss your step, be out of fashion for just one season and you’re doomed. And most of the reviews of FCUK’s fashion have been damning for a couple of years – out of fashion and no longer price competitive, which prompted the company to opt for a campaign that would get everyone’s attention.

What it didn’t count on was that getting everyone’s attention does not necessarily turn into more visitors into the shops. Indeed, as with this campaign, it may have boosted the brand’s name, but it gave people yet another reason to bypass the stores.

It was a lesson another major British clothes retailer, Marks and Spencer, had previously learned. The company, known affectionately by families for generations as Marks and Sparks, fell out of fashion a few years ago. It was a long struggle back, beating back hostile buyouts and the like, and the company tried whatever it could to bring back the masses – including its first television campaign.

To impress buyers that it had all sizes, and it was not just for the young, the TV ad featured a full-figured naked woman on a hilltop shouting out, “I’m normal!” And the masses stayed away! The company has recovered today, its fashion now in fashion, and its advertising features Twiggy!

Back in Boston, the mayor probably has the best marketing advice for FCUK. “Use some sense!”

FCUK Advertising Not Yet Banned In Boston – But Getting Close