Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [76]
Naturally, these provocative ads sparked public outrage—not to mention stories in Time, Newsweek, and People, among other magazines. CBS and NBC dropped some of the Shields commercials in protest. Women against Pornography opposed the ads. Gloria Steinem called them worse than violent pornography, but even this didn’t come between consumers and their Calvins. In fact, it helped sales, and soon Klein controlled nearly 70 percent of the jeans market at major retailers like Bloomingdale’s. “Did we sell more jeans?” Klein was quoted as saying. “Yes, of course! It was great.”8
In 1995, Klein upped the ante. He released a series of provocative TV commercials whose unsteady camera work, low lighting, grainy resolution, and setting in what resembled a cheap, wood-paneled San Fernando Valley motel room appeared to deliberately mimic low-budget 1970s porn videos. In them, a throaty, off-camera male voice asked the pubescent models suggestive questions such as, Do you like your body? Have you ever made love before a camera?
The American public was indeed aroused. The American Family Association rolled out a well-orchestrated letter campaign to retailers, urging them not to carry the Calvin Klein brand in their stores. Soon, the U.S. Department of Justice even launched an investigation into whether Klein had violated child pornography laws (turns out he hadn’t, and was never charged). In response to the outcry, Klein denied all accusations of pornography, claiming they merely depicted “glamour…an inner quality that can be found in regular people in the most ordinary setting.”9
In the end, Klein pulled the ads, but the controversy created news—and more free publicity—in itself. And his new line of jeans, specifically tailored so the groin and the buttocks seam are both raised to emphasize the crotch and the rear end, became among the most coveted pieces of clothing of the year.
The designer kept pushing the envelope. It was working, wasn’t it? In 1999, Klein ran full-page ads in several periodicals (including the New York Times Magazine) that featured two boys no older than five or six jumping around on a couch wearing nothing but Calvin Klein underwear. Naturally, this created a fresh new wave of outrage among antipornography groups, child’s rights advocates, and the general public. Though a company spokesperson claimed that the ads were intended to “capture the same warmth and spontaneity that you find in a family snapshot,” a day later Klein very publicly scrapped the entire campaign, including a large billboard of the same boys that was set to debut in Times Square.10
In the same way that banned books become the must-read phenomena of the year, more than a few observers were by now realizing that Klein’s tactic of unveiling sexually suggestive ads, getting consumers in a lather, then abruptly yanking them was in fact a PR maneuver as risqué and attention-grabbing as the ads themselves. Klein’s growth was spectacular throughout the seventies and early eighties—his brand was so ubiquitous that blue jeans became known simply as “Calvins.”
Since 2002, when, facing competition from heavyweights like The Gap, Klein was forced to sell his business to the apparel giant Phillips Van Heusen, a number of other brands have taken a page from