I’m sorry, you want to do what?
Sometimes, you get asked to do the craziest stuff.
Stuff that really stretches you. Takes you a little out of your comfort zone.
Might make you a bit uncomfortable at times, but will be very rewarding at the climax.
Might require a little nap afterwards. Maybe a thoughtful cigarette.
As a copywriter, I mean. Or in marketing generally.
I wasn’t referring to anything else. Honest.
Because sometimes, you get given the strangest of briefs.
“We want this,” the client says, hurriedly, “and this is how you’re going to do it. Search here for your research and references, and off you go. Crack on. And don’t look at us like that – we’re paying you, remember?”
Take the idea of sustainable porn, for instance.
Yep. You read that right. Sustainable. Porn.
Pornhub, one of those websites a person can visit to watch adult films apparently, (really not my field of expertise here, sorry) has come up with the ingenious premise of “Sexstainability”. Now, break that word down into its three component parts. Go on. I dare you.
The idea, if you’ll bare with me (I promise to stop in a bit), is that the website and viewers “come together for Mother Earth” because, according to brand ambassador and porn model Kira Noir, “the world is f**ked. And not in a good way.”
Righto. Time to do the decent thing and get involved, I guess. In the campaign video Get Sexstainable now!, launched on January 26th, Kira goes on to helpfully explain that “it’s time to reclaim that arousing feeling of doing something good for our planet,” before presenting viewers with her massive, sustainable tips: “flicking a switch (turning off a lightswitch), turning a knob (it’s a running bath faucet, but okay), or spreading your seed (literally putting seeds into a plant-pot filled with soil, but in a sexy way).”
The whole idea was dreamed up by Pornhub Cares, the philanthropic arm of the porn giant (not an actual giant you understand, although Porn Giant is the new Marvel superhero we all need). The instructional videos are part of a 30-day initiative in which Pornhub promises to donate 10c (roughly 8 pence) to 2030 or Bust, a climate crisis charity, every time somebody watches a Sextainable video.
It’s not the first time that Pornhub have done their bit to save the world either, having run a Beesexual initiative to encourage viewers to do their bit to save the world’s bee population. On that occasion, helpful advice for creating exactly the right garden conditions for bees to copulate rubbed up against ‘bee porn’ cartoons voiced by real porn stars, with titles including Pollen Squirter Gets Raided by Exotic Explorer and Married Couple’s First Bee-Some. Quite.
Whether a month of environmentally-friendly eroticism is going to be quite enough to make a difference is a moot point, but the challenging concept of eco-porn is a brief that the marketing brains at Pornhub have successfully risen to.
What’s the strangest brief you’ve ever been given? I’d love to know.