Tuesday, March 23, 2010



Must not mention testicles in beer ad

Australia:
"Foster's has pulled an advertising campaign that it admitted was too risque for TV just days after it released it online. The series of seven ads for Carlton Draught, which make reference to "man plums" and "goolies", were put on the internet last Wednesday.

The company aborted a TV campaign in late February days before it was due to go to air, after senior executives in the listed alcohol manufacturer got cold feet about the ads. The company then decided that having spent the best part of the $200,000 in fees and production, it felt compelled to release it on the internet in the hope that somehow only its target market of 18- to 30-year-old men would see it.

That strategy appears to have failed and in the past few days, as the ad got more talked about and viewed on the internet - normally something that every marketer craves - Foster's management pulled the plug, fearing a public relations backlash.

Source

"Goolies" is actually Scottish slang. It is very rare for Australians to call them anything but "balls". Video at link. Americans often seem to deal with a similar sensitivity by using a Spanish word: "cojones". For some reason, using the Spanish word seems quite respectable. "Cojones" is not listed in my Spanish dictionary so I gather that it is a slang term too. Spanish slang is OK, apparently. All very strange.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was a dumb idea to start with, unless of course, their only objective was to create a controversy, in which case, it was a good idea! The type of publicity they get over this will tell the tale.

Robert said...

I'm not sure if the Spanish word is "cojones" or "cajones". I do remember that in the movie "El Norte", there was a line "Buste mis huevos por veinte dolares..." which was translated in the subtitle, "I got my balls busted for $20." "Huevos" translates literally as "eggs", but seems to have been Spanish slang for "balls".

Adrian Reynolds said...

Indeed, Robert, the Mexican slang for testicles is generally "huevos" - so much so that folk asking for eggs now refer to them in the singular as "huevo" or "blanquillos" (literally, 'little white ones').

Anonymous said...

Thank you for talking for the entire country JJR.
Here in Perth (where I've lived for my entire 38 years) it is certainly not unknown to refer to one's male dangling bits as goolies - and I've heard the expression for years.

jonjayray said...

Perth does have a large British presence

Yes "huevos" is also used in Mexico

There are often many euphemisms for genital matters

Quotation Marx, The Punctuation Nazi said...

Must not mention "testicles in beer" ad?

Certainly not! :)