Red Lion Canada–which recently redesigned its home page in an effort to render your 2008 HP desktop even more completely useless–flirts with nudity in its latest campaign for Maytag, a sponsor of the upcoming Toronto Pan Am Games.
As the Globe and Mail noted last Friday, most ads tied to the Games have focused on the nobility of sport and the rare chance for Canada to present its best face to the rest of the world.
Red Lion, however, went the other way, focusing on the sweaty, nearly-nude bodies of some of the athletes involved. These professionals just need to get clean with the help of a “hunky new Maytag man”:
Red Lion Creative Director Matthew Litzinger, who left Cossette last summer, explained the strategy behind the campaign, telling Globe and Mail that Maytag wants to spend its ad dollars differently during the Games.
What does that mean? Targeting.
“Obviously, mass communication channels are still used and in fact relied upon, but they are no longer the primary driver of a media spend.”
So far, the ad and its #performancecounts tag have not attracted too much attention, but that could change when the games launch next month. Or not.