If you happen to be a member or non member for that matter of AAF Greenville I’ve got a little something to talk about. Back in July I was asked by a person on the AAF board to submit a design for their yearly calendar (of course they wanted me – you can’t do any better in Greenville). The only restriction was that I had to fill in the blank in the statement “One Big _________ Family”. For which I chose “Confidence-Boosting”. After that it was free range – at least that’s what I thought. My idea was to evoke peoples imagination. You know since we are filling in the blank – how about the viewer fills in another visual blank. See image below.

Too Provacative?

Yep, that’s it. A mannequin with a black bar placed in the appropriate place. F-ing brilliant. Before I go on let me say that I knew this might be a little provocative for my grandma – maybe my mom, but never people in advertising? Advertising was built on sex and provoking reaction. That’s the point, grab ’em by the balls and feed them your line of shit. Maybe just maybe they will like it.

It came to my attention that at one point my page was actually taken out of the calendar. Too “crazy”. Really? It’s not even a real person. My instant reaction was one of anger, but then I realized that “hey this is Greenville, South Carolina”. I guess in a way I wasn’t expecting it to be a walk in the park, but I would have liked to at least seen people that work in advertising standup and shout “this is art, this is genius, we can’t censor this amazing interpretation”. Well, somebody must have stood up and said something, because a couple of weeks later I heard it was back in. I can only hope that it really is in. From what I hear it’s been out then in more times then Jenna Jameson. I guess tomorrow I’ll find out at the kickoff party. If they took it out so be it. Greenville needs a boost of creatives pulling together and visually shaking up the community. Give people something to think about. Show the creative world that we can be on the map for all the right reasons. Not just because we had a really nice real estate client that was willing to spend $200 per piece on a promotional item. Can you imagine how provocative we could be for $200 per unit.

So, I’d love to see some variations on the black bar. How different can an image be just because it has a black bar on it. Something could take on a whole new meaning, but does that change the original intent? It’s kind of like painting a house – you can keep it nice and neutral, but the minute you paint pink polka dots on it you can just forget it. It’s still the same house – the contents are the same and so is the structure. Maybe we all just need the balls to piss someone off. Maybe we all just need to really look at what we are seeing. It might work better then grabbing your panties and wadding ’em up until tears roll down your face. We aren’t in Kansas anymore Dorothy so put your little blue dress away and start creating from the gut.