NORFOLK, VA — The fallout from that all-too-brief glimpse of Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl halftime nipple guard continues to send ripples through the advertising world. Not only will there be no Playboy Super Bowl party – but there will be no PETA “Veggie Love” commercial.Declared “too hot” by NBC, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animal’s latest attempt to use sex to sell vegetarian and vegan values features an assortment of hot babes getting up close and very personal with some of their favorite garden produce.
Although any number of beer commercials have sold suds with sexy sizzle, PETA’s “Veggie Love” commercial is just too steamy for NBC’s litigation-nervous legal team. Worries that a nearly nude woman supposedly “screwing herself with broccoli” or another “rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin” can only mean that the commercial will be even that much more popular online.
Given that viral video tracking firm Visible Measures estimates that as the video had received as many as 144,000 hits by the 27th of January, many believe that the all-girl veggie fest ad was never really meant to play on television and that shots of a nude hot tubbing beauty and a lingerie clad woman “licking pumpkin” and “rubbing asparagus on breast” were never intended to grace the home television screen.
Fake releasing ads that producers know are too hot for a nervous television industry to show – and then launching them online while controversy is high – is nothing new. Previous successful efforts were made by GoDaddy with a Danica Patrick Super Bowl ad that got more attention online than it ever could on television last year, as well as a Sean “Puffy” Combs perfume ad rejected by MTV and released with additional footage on the Web.
Find out what all the hubbub is about – and ponder why there rarely any men in the increasingly sexy PETA ads – by visiting http://www.peta.org/content/standalone/VeggieLove/Default.aspx.
