Travel Fox 87 -88

Brand: Travel Fox
Year: Fall/Winter 1988
Models:
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"Travel fox shoes created a stir when they were turned down by some US television stations and publications, including Rolling Stone magazine.The rejected advertisements became the focus of the American news media, providing Travel Fox with far more exposure than it could ever have hoped to get with its limited advertising budget. Travel Fox footwear became an overnight hit with consumers." .- Asian business: Volume 27, 1991

Youtube member VHSBoxes uploaded the commercial aired by Mtv in 1988.



"The visuals used in the entire campaign showed various permutations of a man and a woman wearing the shoes and posing in a highly suggetsive position that would be unnatural one for both partners unless oral sex were involved. Did it worked? sales in the New York marked tripled in the year following publication of this and partner campaign ads" .- "Reception and Responsibility" By Charles U. Larson



"Sex in advertising has become "old hat," says Richard Kirshenbaum, the 26-year-old executive creative director of Kirshenbaum & Bond, a New York-based ad agency. "People are saying 'like please, enough already.'"

Adds Stephen Bowen Jr., president of the U. S. operations for advertising agency J. Walter Thompson Co.: "People want to see relationships and good, clean fun."

The new prudishness may also be spurring some advertisers to drop agencies that have promoted sexier ads. Travel Fox Inc., a shoe manufacturer, says it recently fired its Swedish ad agency, Hall & Cederquist. The company, which is using Mr.Kirshenbaum's firm for its new ad campaign, won't say why it fired Hall & Cederquist.

But the shoe maker created a stir last year when it ran an ad showing a man and woman, naked from the waist down except for their socks and shoes. "We didn't want our shoes to clash with clothes," says Ashley Schapiro, president of Travel Fox.

The ad was widely criticized, but according to Mr. Schapiro, "shock appeal absolutely worked." The company, however, has decided to alter its approach. In the future, says Mr. Schapiro, "we won't use sex to advertise shoes."

Source: Sex in Ads Becomes Less Explicit, As Firms Turn to Romantic Images, 2/11/88, WALL STREET JOURNAL.