While we are on the subject of taste, I deplore the current fashion of using clergymen, monks and angels as comic figures in advertising. It may amuse you, but it shocks a lot of people. But I don’t object to scatological humor in advertising. I had no qualms about presenting the Grand Prize in a Clio ceremony to a Japanese soap commercial which featured a small boy farting in a public bath. The most risqué copy I have seen was for Paco Rabanne men’s cologne. Sales went up 25 per cent, and the advertisement was voted the best to appear in magazines in 1981. The Health Education Council in England uses advertising to encourage girls to get free contraceptives from Family Planning Clinics. There is a functional reason to show nudes in these ads for beauty products. Nudes have become commonplace in European advertising and are beginning to appear in American advertisements, too.

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