The recently launched Lelo Hex has been attracting attention for plenty of wrong reasons. Who knows what their PR department was thinking when they picked an on-record abuser of women to be the poster boy for a range of condoms?
They’re not the only people to somehow forget that women buy products, and women are not usually thrilled with advertising or promotion which seems to imply – or blatantly does imply – that sexual assault is either amusing or simply no big deal: the advert below got Bloomingdales into a lot of well-deserved trouble.
Interestingly, the bloke looks a bit like Robin Thicke, another creepy creep or at least a man who likes pretending to be one. Perhaps Lelo’s PR bucketheads might also have considered him a good choice.
Writers, and particularly writers of erotica, tend not to have a lot of spare cash to spend on promotional material or hiring some dubious celebrity or other to endorse a product. But some of us are quite good at hexing ourselves without professional assistance.
We currently live in a fucking volatile world, and it doesn’t take much to set the whole internet either raging for your blood or pissing itself laughing at you. So the next time you’ve made something good and want to share it with the world, maybe get a couple of friends to cast an eye over your marketing strategies before you launch. “Try not to be a total asshat” is good general advice, but sadly it doesn’t always seem to make its way through everybody’s skulls.
Oh yeah, and another thing, dear Lelo. I don’t know about the rest of the world but the name Hex doesn’t fill me with confidence that the product will protect me against either STIs or unplanned pregnancies. I don’t want my important little places infested with demonic energy, either.