Believe it or not, there are a few situations where dressing up as a giant penis and spraying people with confetti is inappropriate. Promoting condom use on behalf of a sex education charity is one of those situations, according to thirtysomething Norwegians.
To clarify, sex education charity RFSU hired ad agency Involve! to come up with something for a condom use campaign, which began as a response to rising chlamydia rates in Norway. Involve! then hired 19-year-old student Philip van Eck because he was tall enough to fit in the giant penis suit they'd built. Once properly fitted, Philip ran around spouting golden confetti at total strangers in service of the campaign's tagline, "Tiss kan overraske," which means "Penis can surprise you."
If they'd set the ad to Da Vinci's Notebook's "Enormous Penis," it would have been perfect.
Involve! meant for this to be cheeky and fun, and kind of gross, and they succeeded, but not across all audiences. Young people apparently loved it, but the over-30 crowd didn't like it one bit, and many of them called the stunt pointless and banal.
Philip thought the whole thing was hilarious, because he's 19. But it wasn't without a few hiccups. "If I can do a good thing for others, just by being a dick, there is nothing better," Philip said. "The filming was not unproblematic, as passers-by wanted selfies with the giant penis. Suddenly, lots of people wanted to touch the penis and take pictures with the penis. I almost felt harassed."
Have I mentioned how fortunate we are to live in this time?