Back at the beginning of March, Pornhub announced that it was planning its first-ever national ad campaign. Gasp! A porn streaming site, with ads visible all over the country? Surely not! The caveat, of course, is that the campaign had to be SFW — a tall order, given that the nature of Pornhub is inherently NSFW. So what’s an adult streaming site to do? Tap into its target market, of course. They turned the creation of the campaign into a contest, asking fans to send in proposals for what they think the ads should look like. The best idea will get a one-year contract to work as Pornhub’s creative director — and guess what? It’s time to determine which of the finalists will win that fabulous prize! Hoorah!
Pornhub announced the 15 finalists yesterday; now it’s up to the public to choose the winner. Most of them are print ads, though a few are videos; what they all have in common, though, is their supreme cleverness. Seriously. It takes some really outside-the-box thinking to come up with an image that communicates clearly and effectively what the company is going for in a way that’s not super explicit. You can check all of them out over at the Pornhub Campaign Tumblr; additionally, here are a few submissions I feel are worth noting.
I dig that this one is as all-inclusive as you can get with a simple graphical representation:
And I love this one for the message it sends:
Writes its creator, “The goal of the campaign is to promote Pornhub through a social, friendly, and human viewpoint, showing the faces of all the different types of people that watch porn and not only the known stereotypes.” The idea was even submitted with a bunch of different images, so you can get a feel for how the thing would look as a whole.
This one is probably the cleverest of the bunch:
But I’ll be honest — I’m kind of pulling for this one:
Because, I mean... dinosaurs.
Of course, the question remains as to whether any major media companies would actually be willing to run ads touting adult content. Business Insider, for example, reached out to Spike TV when the contest was first announced to see how amenable it would be to partnering with Pornhub. Spike seems like the kind of network that would love something like this, right? Wrong. “We would never allow Pornhub advertising, ever,” responded David Schwarz, Spike’s senior vice president of communications.
Regardless of what Spike TV thinks (prudes!), you can still do your part in helping to pick the winning entry. Head on over to the Pornhub Campaign Tumblr to cast your vote now!
Images: Pornhub
