WHERE SUCCESSFUL ADVERTISING MEETS LGBT EQUALITY

Gruppo Campari, Adulterous Scratches

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In an extravagant hotel, with opera music playing, a woman wearing a coat and pants descends into the room by a grand staircase.

She sits at a table alone and slyly stares at a man in a suit across the room and then clinks her glass with her fingernails.

He then grasps the back of his shoulder, which is noticed by the long-haired blonde sitting with him. She jumps up, pulls back his undershirts and reveals finger scratches on his neck.

Angrily, she looks back at the first woman, who is smirking. The blonde throws her drink into the face of the man and then charges across the room to the woman. Her shall then falls from her shoulder, revealing three scratches of her own. The confused man frowns, and he gets a similar smirk from the first woman, revealing the love triangle.

This is a rare example The Commercial Closet has of bisexuality--which is downright invisible in advertising.

Even though one wears more masculine clothes, the women here are still very glossy. Typically, lesbians are there for the male gaze, almost fulfilling his fantasy but staying out of reach.

Alcohol companies are well represented in The Commercial Closet, largely due to an effort in the mid-1990s to pull away from the industry's longterm sexist advertising themes that objectified women. Such beer commercials were summed up by the Swedish Bikini Team ads from Stroh Brewing Co. for Old Milwaukee. Looking for new material to mine, brewers began extensively playing with gay and transgender themes in their advertising. However, because beer drinkers are stereotypically macho, the tone of many of the ads were more often negative.

User Comments
Darus Walls
You anticipate an altercation between the two woman over this guy; however it has the perfect twist.

Chris Holden
Terrific commercial. It's almost a film in itself. As tight and as broad as a Hemingway short story. Fits Hemingway's iceberg theory, that 7/8 of the story is hidden beneath the surface. The fact that it has a bi-sexual theme makes it even richer.

Spencer Lucas
Love it. One could argue that it furthers the "bisexuals are cheaters" stereotype, but I don't mind when it's so clever and nonjudgmental.

Robert d'Artois
I loved this commercial! It is highly sophisticated and does not fall into the easy, cheesy clichés used by alcohol companies when they advertise using gay/lesbian topics. A masterpiece!