Trashy Advertising

I have long debated, internally, the worth of trashy advertising. On the one hand, trashy ads do create buzz.
On the other hand, at what cost? Do they work? For whom?

Recently I heard the local talk radio station ranting about a casino billboard assaulting the commuters stuck on the Ben Franklin Bridge. I was rushing to get myself and the children off to their day, so I may be fuzzy in recollecting the headline: "Only one thing's hotter than our slots" . It focussed on a part of the female anatomy, like adouble-entendre. In my mind I saw the creative team, Beavis and Butt-head, elbowing one another with a wink and a nod from the head of the agency.

Coincidently, as luck would have it, I was called in one day to put together a great concept for some ads by a local agency getting the opportunity to do a big national ad for a chain of Atlantic City casinos owned by a prominent Real Estate Developer who hosts a hit TV show. Only one of the ads they'd conceived showed the big D, and only a small bit.

Was it because the casino corporation had recently declared bankruptcy for the second time? No, it was because they were tired of showing him. They wanted to do something new and creative and sexy. So, one of the ads had three naked women in bed, covered with dollars and the headline "Paradise Thrice". Okay, so go ahead and sue me. It wasn't my headline or my idea.

I find this approach to casino advertising somewhat amazing in that most of the people I see at casinos are retirees. Even modern mature people of this generation don't relate to an in-your-face menage et trois -- C'mon, even in the old geezers' wildest dreams. And, most of the people with the big money are Baby Boomers -- people who culturally embraced feminism. So, even if in the cult of youth they may have revolutionized the idea of "free love", how many of them want to see the flesh laid out there like some salacious smorgasborg?