Have you ever looked at an ad campaign and tried to work out how many people must have signed off on it before approval?

Last week we took the piss out of Castle Lager (no, we’re not talking about the taste), for trying to capitalise on the Ashwin Willemse incident, and it’s clear they missed the mark with that one.

‘Hold my beer’, said Ocean Basket, because somehow they reckoned these ads below were a good idea.

The campaign has actually been running since at least the last week or so of April, but has come under fire over the past few days after a few tweets did the rounds.

The Citizen picked up on it, too:

The campaign, which shows hands coming through holes in the wall to display plates of food from the popular seafood restaurant chain, has been singled out for its alleged similarity to the ‘glory hole’.

The question remains, is the association that people have been making between the hands in the Ocean Basket ad and ‘glory holes’ a natural one, or should people get their minds out of the gutter?

If you’re still playing catch-up, here’s what you find when you Google “glory hole definition”:

Number four, pal.

I dunno that the term is only used to talk about sex between male homosexuals, and I’m more on board with the Wikipedia definition.

It’s spicy:

…“a glory hole (also spelled gloryhole and glory-hole) is a hole in a wall, or other partition, often between public lavatory stalls or adult video arcade booths, for people to engage in sexual activity or observe the person in the next cubicle while one or both parties masturbate. In addition to the penis, fingers or the tongue may be inserted into the hole”.

Gee, they really went all in on that one.

OK, let’s take a gander at what Ocean Basket’s campaign looks like, via some of the tweets that picked up on it:

Yeah, so that one is a little odd.

One of their other ads:

I have heard of having a face for radio, but surely there is no need to go to these extremes?

The same campaign is still running on their site:

And on their Instagram:

Even South Africa’s favourite film critic got in on the action, way back in April:

Maybe they were too cheap to pay the full rate for models, and just went for hand models?

At least they didn’t go with Gemini Models.

I suppose they have succeeded in making people talk about the restaurant chain, but it’s not an association one usually wants to make with food.

I reckon it could work for a restaurant chain you find mainly at truck stops, though.

[source:citizen]