Marc Jacobs’s new men’s fragrance ads have been taken down at the Bay department stores across Canada.

Oh Marc, what a LARGE bottle you have!

In his latest fragrance ads, designer Marc Jacobs is sprawled out, oiled and naked on top of a shiny material that appears to have been pulled from the inside of the space pod. His tattoos, including coloured stars and, deplorably, one of SpongeBob SquarePants, are on full display.  His legs are spread open and between them, he clutches an oversize, bottle of his new fragrance, Bang! The somewhat pained look on his face may communicate, “I want you so bad.” Or maybe just, “This bottle is seriously crushing my package.” 

Whatever your take on the ad, it’s been removed by Bay Department Stores Canada wide.  Why is the question I had, and the Bay responded with...

The world of fashion advertising is often-extreme, and this campaign definitely follows suit.  But is it “too much” for your local Bay department store?

Is the controversy about this campaign valid -- or should we (the Bay) grow up and face the fact that these ads are an art-form, a visual creative expression. Personally, my initial reaction when seeing the ad was does this fragrance smells like someone’s package.(For the record, the cologne’s manufacturer Coty, explains on their  website it smells like three kinds of peppercorn mixed with birch and oak or something like that.)

I could go on and nitpick...trying to analyze what message the ad is in fact trying to convey, posing questions like who exactly is the target audience: Straight men? Gay men? Astronauts? Because well, Bang to me joins a growing collection of head-scratching fragrance ads supposedly aimed at straight men but featuring hot naked dudes (do a quick search for Jean Paul Gaultier or Dolce and Gabbana ad campaigns). -- But the point of my rant is to question the removal of these ads from Bay department stores (not what I was originally going to blog about, but recently noticed they’d been taken down at my local Bay).  Does the removal make sense to anyone else? Or should the Bay focus on customer service issues, having enough staff to help you, having sufficient tills to pay for your items, rather than being concerned with removing ads that a few people, who don’t appreciate the artistic power of ad campaigns, complained about?

Personally, the Bay in which I noticed the ads removed has complaints all the time, about a number of issues I’ve seen raised first hand and nothing has ever been done to resolve them.

What are your thoughts? Leave a comment, - Tell us what you think.

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By Brian