Premier Estates Wine have launched their first ever advertising campaign, and it’s got a whole lot of people talking. For all the wrong reasons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FI7G56uZHg
Amazingly, this isn’t an in-house job. Premier Estates paid London ad agency Saatchi Masius – yes, an offshoot of the famous Saatchi & Saatchi – for this.
Of course, there’s a Twitter campaign as well:
Tweet 'I want to #TasteTheBush' and you could wine a case of wine! Winners chosen at random, good luck! pic.twitter.com/zUPqaxEW5K
— Premier Estates Wine (@premestateswine) August 11, 2015
And as you’d expect, Twitter users have been quick to respond. A lot of anger has been directed at the company, with users calling the advert ‘childish’, ‘sexist’, and ‘vulgar’ accusing the brand of objectifying women.
Also, it’s really not funny.
We have to ask, Premier Estates: when the actress places the wine glass suggestively in front of herself and says ‘Australia practically jumps out of the glass – in fact, some say you can almost taste the bush,’ do you laugh? And if you do laugh, is it because you think the line is a clever satire of the pompous nature of the wine industry? Or because the word ‘bush’ still tickles the underdeveloped side of your sense of humour? Be honest.
At which point in your discussions did you take the route that led you to poke fun at the existence of women’s pubic hair? Was it after the second or third case of your own product?
You could almost be fooled into thinking the mention of a woman having pubic hair in advertising was progressive, if it wasn’t for the actress’s reaction to her own statement. Why have her look embarrassed?
But my biggest question is this: why do you want to associate the taste of your wine with having tasteless wiry hair in your mouth? The advert isn’t clever, and if it is a laugh, it’s the cheap sniggering kind of laugh you hear from the mouths of boys hunched over sticky magazines at the back of the classroom.
And as for your responses to the backlash on Twitter (typical example: “Thx for not beating around the bush with that feedback. We’re sorry you didn’t like the ad. We hope you try the wine anyway”), you’re reminding us more than a little of Protein World and their cheap bikini body ads. Yes, you’ve succeeded in getting a reaction, but you’re really not getting the message.
We’ll be buying our wine elsewhere.
Main image: Premier Estates/Facebook