December 14, 2010

Ouch! JCPenney & the Ho's

JC Penney - now offering escort service?
































I love the holiday season. There is so much advertising clutter flying through the orbit... just the odds demand that this incredible amount of imagery paired with type creates one or more really amusing, unintentional, and sometimes extremely humorous byproducts from time to time.

Speaking of the power of type and typesetting. The above would probably have gone by unnoticed, if it were not for the intentional play on words using Santa's annually reoccurring "Ho-Ho-Ho" in combination with the "Who - Who - Who", which creates an extremely funny, and I am sure unintended message, when combined not with the image of a Santa Clause, but a woman instead.

Ever since rap and hip hop music have brought the term "ho" into the mainstream and pop culture, pretty much every junior in high-school knows of its meaning describing a sexually promiscuous woman, and that by no means in a nice way.

What was the Art Director on this thinking? He/she probably had nothing but the holidays in mind, and I'm pretty sure that if you talked to them they wouldn't get the irony of it. That's because of the inside-out perspective of their profession. Problem is: the consumer doesn't always assign the meaning you had in mind when composing your ad and crafting your message... she assigns whatever she thinks it means.

All I see is a woman and three times "HO-HO-HO". Exclamation mark! Oh my....

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