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A nationwide billboard campaign asking “Still A Virgin? For Help, Call 888-742-4335” is creating controversy in a growing number of cities. TV news stations in Louisiana, Miami, San Diego, and Arizona have so far covered the brouhaha as local politicians demand the billboards’ removal. Turns out the whole thing is a ruse, a flash marketing campaign to create awareness for The Virginity Hit, the “R”-rated feature comedy from Sony Pictures which is sponsoring the billboards. The movie is about three guys who try to get their virgin pal laid and memorialize it on camera. So what happens if you call the phone number? A recorded message from the movie’s cast members gives an array of semi-humorous options for virgins, then offers a link to the film’s website. The number, 888-743-4335, has been dialed 70,000 times in five days.
Such guerrilla marketing campaigns have been employed to great result on The Last Exorcism, Paranormal Activity, Exit Through the Gift Shop, to create awareness on films that blur the line between fact and fiction, and have tiny promotional budgets and no stars. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s blowback on this movie. Laughing all the way to the bank in anticipation are Gary Sanchez partners Will Ferrell and Adam McKay and Chris Henchy, who produced with Principato Young’s Paul Young and Peter Principato. The film will be released in college towns on September 10th, with a wider roll out planned for the next weekends depending if it catches on. The pic was written and directed by Andrew Gurland and Huck Botko, writers of The Last Exorcism, which cost $1.5 million. The Virginity Hit cost a whopping $2M.
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“Secretly sponsoring the billboards” by putting the Columbia PIctures logo on the lower right of the layout?
If anyone sees this billboard and doesn’t realize it is some form of film advertising, it is probably better they don’t try to procreate.
Sadly, this is the same the country in which a sizeable population believes the president did not grow up in the U.S. and is Muslim. While I am not the biggest fan of the president, the know-nothing element of our country are taking over. So, if we followed your rule about procreation, we wouldn’t have many new babies being born. Just saying.
Are you a Tea Party member?
Then again, the Columbia Pictures logo is in very small type in the lower corner and presumably people are driving and don’t really have the time to pull over and take it all in (no pun intended).
There’s one on my college campus. The logo on the bottom right is so small that you have to get RIGHT next to it to see it. From any kind of distance, it’s not readable. People can be forgiven for not realizing these are movie posters.
Another comedy about sex. How original.
There must be a LOT of sexually frustrated studio types in Hollywood.
Remember SEX DRIVE?
neither do I.
Ha!
zzzzzZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I remember Sex Drive, that flick was hilarious
Uh yeah, this whole “sex” thing is played out. What?
“huckleberrys are being duped”
Wow. And we wonder why the rest of the country thinks we’re all arrogant pricks?
No one is being “duped.” The billboards exist, don’t they? Your assumption that people don’t “get” that it is a film campaign is quite a leap. The campaign implies that being a virgin is a negative, something that *gasp!* parents may not like their children being fed while simply walking down the street.
As a parent, I hope I have a relationship with my child built on trust and understanding, so when a studio or anyone else tries some lame marketing campaign aimed at selling some crappy movie to my kid, we can talk about how that’s all it is, some lame marketing campaign. I doubt it will put anymore pressure on him than he’s going to be already getting from friends at school. This publicity is actually probably helping this stupid movie get more attention than it deserves.
So, when you say, “… we can talk about how that’s all it is, some lame marketing campaign.” (to sell a crappy movie to your kid), how do you think I should frame the discussion about the word ‘virginity’ with my five-year-old daughter who’s just learning how to read? This is invasive, offensive and obscene.
I said the same thing to the new group in our neighborhood…’friends and family of your gay neighbors’ when they gave my daughter a pamphlet about HIV/Aids prevention.
Shouldn’t I have the RIGHT to determine WHEN/IF the discussion is appropriate??
Major motion picture with a trial release? Check your buzzwords.
And when is flash marketing not stupid? At least this isn’t a bomb threat.
“The film will be released in college towns on September 10th, with a wider rollout planned for the subsequent two weekends depending if it catches on”
Gee, a movie with the original and fresh plot of losers chasing sex. Can’t believe nobody’s thought of that one before!
i thought it was for “Easy A” that movie looks awful and this one doesnt sound good at all ..
I knew that damn billboard was too good to be true. Assholes.
Gattaca, 1997, reloaded.
“guerrilla marketing” and “nationwide billboard campaign” don’t make much sense together in my mind. I thought it’s either one thing or the other.
Let’s all not forget about producer David Permut’s legendary Homeless-for-hire billboard for YOUTH IN REVOLT. Nikki posted about it and called him a marketing genus… I’d say it worked.
I saw one today as I was driving. Just caught a glimpse and wondered if what I saw was right. I thought maybe it was an ad for Virgin Mobile, or something like that.
You just gave the Virgin Mobile competition an idea… or any airline other than Virgin Air… or…
When I called I got an answering service for “Paris Hilton PR Industries.”
Yes, I so enjoy that billboard – even more for it provoking my 8 year old daughter to ask what a virgin was and why you would want to call someone about it.
So you had to trouble yourself by taking time out of your day and behaving as if you were a responsible parent!? OH NOES!
It is pushing things a bit too far. In the photo, the logos are small and faint, and passing by in a car, people would be unlikely to get the full impact of it being an ad for a film. That’s the point, as your story shoes – press is being generated. It’s in public view all hours of the night and (while it IS NOT) it could be mistaken for solicitation for prostitution. Which is illegal, and immoral when a minor is exposed to it.
BRILLIANT! I love targeted marketing.
degradation of the country continues
As a father of three kids, I find the billboards offensive and I’m not a hick, I live in Manhattan and work constantly in the industry. No doubt the movie is as stale as its premise (filled with fart and come jokes perhaps?) but clearly the ads are working as people are talking about it and giving it free press. So there is money to be made. But as a previous poster commented, unless you study the billboard which is unlikely (I mean most people have their own life) it seems to be condemning virginity which might be easily understood as a ruse by savvy young adults but completely lost on 11-year-old girls just starting to understand there is this powerful thing called sex in the world. If the campagin were targeted to college kids, i.e. in college newspapers and web sites, I would find it less offputting. But i saw this ad walking on Broadway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a highly residential area with about a trillion young kids living there. But, again, there is money to be made, so who gives a shit?
okay hollywood insiders, you’ll know this one —
who’s making these campaigns? i’m curious — they’re good. they grab your attention. more interesting than the traditional poster + tagline formula.
i’m also curious not only about who’s responsible the campaigns (as in leading the charge) but also if there’s any particularly interesting talent working under the man or woman in charge.
wow. The agency that was directed to build this print campaign is so dire for attention they post on deadline.
Sarah Marshall outdoor was way better.
It’s an interesting concept, the marketers must have assumed that they were going to get a controversial response. I’m in Toronto and haven’t seen a billboard, yet I’ve heard that in London, Ontario a smaller city and more conservative in nature there are several.
From a marketing point of view I’m curious as to where they have chosen to place these billboards. If you’ve seen one would you mind letting us know what city it was in?
Thanks.
Put this right along with the strip club billboards we’re assaulted with just going about our day. All chatter is not good chatter. It just means people aren’t totally numb to the rampant stupidity. Yet. This movie deserves to fail.
I think it’s funny!!! Anyone who would take it seriously, is just a moron…lighten up!!!
Besides, as another poster mentioned, the Columbia Pictures logo in the lower right-hand corner of the billboard, there’s an R-Rating stamp on the lower left-hand corner of the billboard. If drivers and/or riders don’t recognize the R-Rating stamp, then they should have their driver’s licenses taken away from them due to visual impairment.
— Rob
Right. Because when I’m driving I have time to focus on the little tiny details sitting in the corner as I’m zooming by at 60 miles an hour trying not to get in an accident.
As another previous poster mentioned, the stuff is so small even on the regular promotional materials that you can’t see it unless you’re standing next to it.
You people that found the billboards offensive: congratulations. You’ve just been marketed to.
Wake up! The billboards are SUPPOSED TO BE OFFENSIVE. Looks like they hit the mark.
I admit that being offensive is usually not seen as a good advertising tactic, but, it is used as one, very occasionally. Because while there is some blowback, as we can see, such tactics ARE effective in that they create buzz after the ad, and apart from the ad, as they have clearly done here. It’s called stretching your advertising dollar, when you have a limited ad budget. This is an unfunded part of the ad campaign that each and every one of us commenting here have participated in without being paid for it.
By the way, last time I checked, being offensive is not against the law. These billboards clearly don’t cross the line into obscenity. A parody of a public service billboard and using the word “virgin” isn’t anywhere close to obscene.
So if your eight year starts asking what a virgin is, man up you whiny wimp and just explain it to her. Yes, I have no kids, and I don’t care that you do. Tough.
Sounds like someone has a GIANT chip on his shoulder. Bitter much?
Hmmm….sounds like the 40 year old virgin. Or sex drive. Or every other comedy about sex.
This is great advertising- really eye catching, and I can tell it stirs up some reactions in people. Isn’t that what it’s supposed to do? Notice how all the haters have the same opinion. How original.
Here’s the thing, people, as a former ad agency writer/creative director it’s a given that it’s an attention “win” but at what cost? The ambient message (that you can’t ‘turn off’ like other electronic media, btw) is you’re a loser if you’re a virgin.
Is this the message we want to send amidst a pile of bedhopping teen soaps and prego highschool mamas, while clucking about ‘abstinence sex ed’ in schools when kids need comprehensive information?
America is stuck in a Puritanical disconnect between what we sell to kids as ‘cool’ and what we TELL to kids as fact. (or DON’T tell, as is the case w/sexed)
It will cost us as a society far beyond the buzzed about ‘win’ for eyeballs in a short-lived campaign for a trashy, sophomoric flick that desensitizes youth to what sex/intimacy even IS, much less what this billboard implies.
Further reading on Shaping Youth.org:
Kids Are A Captive Audience With Ambient Advertising:
http://www.shapingyouth.org/?p=335
Mommy, Why Are Her Legs Spread Like That? http://www.shapingyouth.org/?p=28
Shaping Youth Through Ambient Advertising:
http://www.shapingyouth.org/?p=448
Oh! And just so you KNOW, I’m an advocate of comprehensive sexed and NOT a ‘pearl clutching helicopter parent’ as so many of us are depicted who have a concern about fouling up kids’ healthy sexuality. Evidence?
Influencers, Accountability & the Global Cost to Youth:
http://www.shapingyouth.org/?p=5728
Amy Jussel
Founder/Exec Dir
http://www.shapingyouth.org
Using the power of media for positive change
@ShapingYouth