Today at the Abercrombie & Fitch store at The Grove they were using the easiest trick in the book to lure in teenage girls and gay men: young male flesh.
A&F’s holiday marketing campaign revolves around The Legend of the Great Moose (gee, what’s that a euphemism for?), which you can learn about by watching a cloying little Flash movie on the A&F website.
The hunks were placed strategically at the entrance to the store next to a sign that read:
“A Little Naughty Can Do A Lot of Nice: A dollar donation to Toys for Tots lets anyone snuggle up for a picture between these two, shirtless A&F guys straight from the Legend of the Great Abercrombie and Fitch Moose. They’ll make Santa think twice before he reaches for another slice of pumpkin pie.”
Upon review, I couldn’t help but notice the unnecessary insertion of the word “straight” into the marketing text. And these boys at the door couldn’t have seemed less enthused that a guy was taking their picture. A&F continues to straddle this very fine line between homo and heterosexuality. It’s a line that’s strong enough to hook the homos and reel them in yet because of major boob abundance in the catalogs the “straight” guys are able to take the bait as well.
A&F’s is brilliant marketing, although it would be nice to one day see them acknowledge that gay is okay in an overt and well-meaning marketing gesture. Titillation is certainly not the same as tolerance.
Did I go in the store and purchase merchandise? I sure did. So I guess the marketing worked, because it wasn’t Santa’s lap I was thinking about sitting on while I swiped my credit card.
A couple more things: How many moose (meese?) had to die for this campaign?
And, can anybody come up with a good caption for the picture below?
