Levi’s has created a new ad for 501 jeans with both straight and gay versions. The straight version, in which a man pulls up his jeans and causes the street below, along with an attractive woman, to crash through the floor of his apartment, is appearing on major networks. The gay version, exactly the same except that the woman is replaced by a man, is running on LOGO.
In both ads, the main actor runs away with his new romantic interest.
According to Ad Age, “[Levi’s Marketing VP Robert Cameron] admits the idea for the dual ads emerged from a tight budget, but later the concept took on greater meaning. ‘At first it made us parse the thought of, what does that say? We’re not spending as much money as we ought to do a dedicated commercial for the gay market. But [then] we thought, if we’re going to do an ad for them, they deserve the same production values. … So doing the same commercial with different endings seemed to us to be a message about absolute equality.'”
While Orbitz has released a similar gay-straight set of ads aimed at their respective audiences using marionettes, the Levi’s ad is seen as the first such ad in the U.S. to do the same using actors.
Check out the straight version, after the jump…
