The Commercial
Closet Association hosted its fourth annual "Images in
Advertising" Awards Ceremony Monday night at New World
Stages in Manhattan. The nonprofit group honors ad
agencies and companies whose mainstream print,
broadcast, and Internet ad campaigns feature fair and
respectful portrayals of LGBT people. The group also
monitors advertisements whose use of gay stereotypes
can be offensive to the LGBT community.
"It's been a busy week of pulling ads,"
Michael Wilke, executive director of Commercial
Closet, laughed. He's right; from Snickers to Nike,
television commercials have been pulled left and right this
week for featuring negative portrayals of the LGBT
community.
Those ads
weren't on anyone's minds Monday night,
however. "We don't honor the
worst," Wilke said. Instead, Wilke, the board of
directors, and an advisory board chose to honor ads
that "bring [the LGBT community] a step closer
to equity in society."
The awards
ceremony was emceed by formidable Sirius OutQ radio host
Frank DeCaro, who sashayed onto the stage amid
applause. The self-described "beige
Volkswagen" introduced the nominees for each of the
10 categories -- Outstanding Interactive Ad,
Outstanding Nonprofit Campaign, and Outstanding
Commercial among them.
"I felt
like I was actually reached out to," Katie Kelly
said. Kelly, an associate broadcast producer at Arnold
Worldwide, assisted with the nominee selections and
was satisfied with the decisions made by Wilke and the
boards.
The honorees
included the iconic Paris Tourism ad (the one featuring that
rugby make-out shot), an
outdoor ad for BMW's hardtop convertible
("Hard top. Firm bottom. It's so
L.A."), and the San Francisco 49er's in-house
ad pledging the team's support
for the GLAAD Media Awards.
DeCaro announced
that in lieu of a representative from the 49ers, the
team had sent a video to accept their award. The crowd
(largely made up of gay men) went wild as the lights
dimmed, only to boo once Lisa Lang, the 49er's
vice president of communications, took the screen instead of
the shirtless football players everyone had been expecting.
The star of the
evening was the winner of Outstanding Commercial in a
Mainstream Market. The honor went to Levi Strauss for its television commercial
depicting a young man putting on a pair of
Levi's jeans. As he pulls up the pants, the street
scene below crashes into his apartment, including a
handsome stranger in a telephone booth. The two eye
each other flirtatiously and then walk off into the city
together.
Everyone had the
sense that they were seeing double after watching this
ad, and not because of the open bar. Levi's had
developed a separate advertisement along with the
winner, both featuring an almost identical premise.
The winning ad's counterpart features a young woman
in the phone booth and, essentially, a straight
ending.
The reason behind
the twin commercials? "Love is the same,"
Robert Cameron, VP of marketing for Levi Strauss,
explained. "It was an innocent way to make a
powerful statement about absolute equality." Not to
mention an innocent way to make people do a double
take, especially when the gay advertisement joined the
straight one on Bravo after having aired exclusively
on LOGO, a lesbian and gay network owned by MTV.
Levi
Strauss's winning advertising strategy helped put
them at the top of the list this year. "We
assume victory," Cameron said, "and then we
advertise that way." (Hannah Clay Wareham, The
Advocate)