I have to admit, I’m a natural born skeptic.

And when I received a news release yesterday about the brewing “controversy” over the Super Bowl spot submitted to CBS by Mancrunch, I had my doubts.

As I’ve noted in my other post on this subject, I tried to confirm a few facts in the previous story and wound up leaving messages or missing late-night call backs.  Today, however, after being approached by Mancrunch’s PR guys for a second time, I submitted some questions (in bold) that were quickly answered by Mancrunch’s spokesman, Dominic Friesen.  What follows is the entire exchange, verbatim – and after that, my thoughts on this entire thing:

1.) Prior to the decision from CBS there were already reports that the spot had been rejected – primarily from bloggers covering gay issues. Was this outcome expected?

Not at all.  Especially given the fact that they accepted the Focus on the Family spot we thought CBS would eventually accept ours given the public attention.

2.) What do you think you could have done from a creative standpoint that would have forced CBS’s hand into accepting your commercial?

Based on their response to this, we don’t think they would take any commercial we created that promoted gay dating.

3.) Do you think a similar spot for a hetero equivelent (i.e. Fling.com, AshleyMadison.com or something like that) would have been accepted by CBS? After all, Mancrunch doesn’t look to be like Match.com or eHarmony - it’s about hooking up, right?

You’re comparing a dating site for single men to a cheating site like AshleyMadison.com?  Nowhere on our commercial do we mention sex or on our web site, for that matter.  We definitely think that if the spot contained a man and a woman kissing on the couch, there wouldn’t be an issue.

4.) What agency produced the ad? The concept and production values of the spot, quite frankly, don’t seem to be all that “out of the box” or expensive – why did it take the agency so long to produce your commercial for the largest advertising stage on the planet (the Super Bowl)?

We produced the spot in-house.  You’re right the spot didn’t take that long to produce.  The reason we only submitted the spot on January 18th was that was only when the web site was ready.  We literally just launched the web site last week.

5.) Why isn’t the URL for your web site included in the ad?

To be honest, we posted an earlier version of the ad. Here is the actual version.

6.) You now have over 5,000 inbound links to Mancrunch as a result of the publicity surrounding this situation with CBS. While it would have been nice to spend the $2 million (or more) to run an ad in the Super Bowl, do you still consider this effort a successful launch?

The effort is not even close to over.  If we can’t advertise in the same places that Match and eHarmony can, this is just the beginning.

7.) Do you intend on running any other television spots on network television this year? In your opinion, do you think the programming would influence the likelihood of a network to accept your creative (for example, would an ad produced for the Academy Awards be more likely to be accepted to run versus an ad produced for the Winter Olympics)?

Absolutely.  We plan on running on network television this year and we’re confident that any program that allows alcohol, erectile dysfunction and other online dating ads will allow ours … which we thought included the NFL.

Now, I’ve done a little more checking and have found some things that, I think, point out that this brouhaha is really just a big stunt – playing on the fears and deadline pressures of both the mainstream and gay media. In fact, in my view, this is a great example of “wag the dog” and shows why, as a society, we still have a long way to go to accept the differences between people and form a more civil society.

Let’s go through the questions I asked and the answers I received and I’ll attempt to point out why I’ve reached my conclusion …

Mancrunch was surprised by the rejection.  Really?
Bloggers covering gay issues were reporting that CBS had rejected Mancrunch’s advertising overtures yesterday.  I’m sure some of the editorializing on their part was based on an assumption of  pre-determined bias against an advertiser reaching out directly – and obviously – to the gay community.  I can understand that.  After viewing the spot, it seemed to me the commercial was made to be rejected – and, for a stunt like this, the spot HAS to be rejected to resonate in sympathetic communities – so I wasn’t surprised by CBS’s rejection.

But according to Mr. Friesen, they didn’t see it coming.  Really?  He claims that since the right-wing Focus on the Family spot with Tim Tebow was accepted, the Mancrunch team thought their spot would eventually be accepted given the public pressure (brought about in an afternoon).  Really?

Whether you agree with Focus on the Family’s anti-abortion/anti-choice/pro-life (you pick) spot or not, it’s clearly a spot advocating a public policy/political stance – not selling a dating service.  Mancrunch is clearly presented as a commercial venture.  They’re not advocating public policy related to mashing with your football buddy over a bowl of chips.

In addition to all that, if you read the rejection notice from CBS, you’ll see that there were also questions about Mancrunch’s credit that needed to be worked out.  This is a multi-million dollar buy we’re talking about.  In typical advertising situations, advocacy/political ads are “cash-up-front” buys which means the station or network know they’re going to get their money after the spot runs.  I’ll bet CBS would have been less inclined to reject Mancrunch’s spot had it been seriously produced and paid for in advance.

Creative changes – would they have made a difference?
Mr. Friesen says “no” – and I’m inclined to agree.  To a point.  Unless Mancrunch had produced this ad with the serious intent of airing it, there isn’t much you could do with it to make it worthy of the biggest stage of the year for advertising creative.  Really.  This is a crappy spot.  Having one character tell the other he “sucks” wouldn’t have made it out of any legit creative department in any agency I’ve ever worked in.

The spot doesn’t really do anything to sell the site, just stir up controversy.  But then, I suspect that’s the point all along.

Would a spot for a hetero equivalent site been accepted?
Here again, Mr. Friesen makes the point that if the spot had contained a man and woman kissing on a couch, there wouldn’t be an issue.  That’s true.  We’ve seen that issue time and again in television ads.  But these two characters aren’t just kissing – they’re mugging each other.  And they’re promoting a site that doesn’t say a thing about “finding a soulmate” or any of the other sappy slogans thrown around by Match.com or eHarmony.

No, Mancrunch is  - as the site claims – where many, many, many men come to play.  Doesn’t sound monogamous to me.  So, while Mr. Friesen is right when he says they don’t mention sex on their commercial or on their web site.  The music on the site talks about wanting to kiss a guy and the site promotes promiscuity by innuendo at the very least.

In addition to all that, I thought it was interesting that Mr. Friesen would single out my reference to AshleyMadison.com and show some offense at my comparison.  He claims the Mancrunch site is “a dating site for single men” (which is not stated or obvious on the site) compared to the other site which promotes affairs between married people (and was featured on CNN a while back, by the way).  His reaction is interesting to me not just because I still think it’s a fair question (as is the comparison to Fling.com) but because the PR firm Mr. Friesen is a principal in, Bridge & Tunnel Communications, represents AshleyMadison.com.  In fact, the Mancrunch spokesperson who left a message for me on my phone, Elissa Buchter, also works for Bridge & Tunnel Communications and as of January 11th was still serving as a media contact person for AshleyMadison.com.

What’s up with the spot?
As I mentioned earlier: in order for the stunt to work, people have to be outraged.  In order for people to be outraged, the spot has to be rejected.

And it’s much easier to reject a crappy spot than it is a good one.

But what ad agency, in their right mind, would take on a creative assignment to produce an ad with the expressed intent of having it rejected from appearing in the Super Bowl (besides GoDaddy’s agency, of course).  The answer – none.  More to the point, what client would say “Hey, I’ll fork over 2-3 million clams to make sure our first-ever, ground-breaking ad gets seen by one-third of all the people in America – but I won’t pay more than $500 to produce the spot.”

I don’t buy Mr. Friesen’s excuse here.  This is the best he could do because, I suspect he suspected that I’d call the agency if he gave me a name of an agency responsible for producing the spot.

The ad for a web site without a URL.  What?
Yeah, the first version of the ad I saw didn’t have a URL in it … I swear it didn’t.  The Mancrunch team sent me a new YouTube link, this time with an ad that included a tiny little “.com” after the Mancrunch name in the spot.  Not much better, but better.

So, which version did they send to CBS for evaluation?  How could they expect their spot to be taken seriously if they didn’t even get their own web site into their ad?

Was the stunt a success?  Mancrunch says “no” so loudly it has to mean “yes.”
The team at Mancrunch has to be eating up this publicity like crazy.  The FOX News hit was critical to the campaign’s success.  It legitimized the story even though it wasn’t a real story – even I could see that – but FOX News didn’t care.  Next to abortion, gay rights is pure gold to FOX.  It winds the stems on their faithful and drives tons of web hits and viewers.  The guys at Mancrunch know this and played FOX News like a fiddle.

And, I’m guessing, the guys at FOX News didn’t mind a bit.  They just laid back and took it like … well, like that baldish guy with the green jersey in the spot.

Once the fire was lit, other sites started jumping in.  My guess is this thing will continue to burn for a few more days and when it’s all said and done, Mancrunch will have tens of thousands of inbound links and an established place atop the gay-dating world.  Whatever that is.

Are we through, yet?  Unfortunately, Mancrunch has pledged to “fight on.”
I’m not so sure this is a good thing, but Mr. Friesen has pledged to “absolutely” plan on running on network television.  That means, I suppose, we’ll see this play staged again around some other event.  And why not.  For Mancrunch, it’s a no-lose scenario.  As long as their ad gets rejected, they’ve created a viral hit and generated tons of publicity and – more importantly – inbound links to their web site that will raise its profile among search engines and the like.  If their ad gets accepted, it runs and creates even more controversy (in all likelihood).

So, what’s the wind-up on all this?

This is, I believe, another manifestation of manufactured controversy like the fake US Chamber of Commerce Announcement or Balloon Boy controversy of last year and any number of other fradulent PR events and fake news that – over the long run – diminish what little confidence the general public still has in the news media.  It’s a shame to see that none of the major news outlets covering this story are doing anything more than dancing to the same tune implanted into FOX News’ brain by a savvy PR flack.

But it’s not really a surprise.

Where’s Howard Kurz when you need him?

UPDATE, 01/30/2010 @ 1:25pm (CST) – I’ve been receiving a few comments on these posts that have been, shall we say, off-topic.  I’m not endorsing or condoning a lifestyle.  This is a blog about media and marketing, not about politics.  And certainly not about people feeling their First Amendment Right to free speech gives them the license to use hateful words on my blog.

I follow the “dinner party” rules of blog monitoring … I allow and encourage spirited conversations about the things people expect to talk about when they come here.  And that’s advertising, marketing, public relations, publicity, journalism and the media.  Anyone who comes in here and tries to be a boor by wading into off-topic, red meat political issues will be shown the door.  Sorry.  But it’s my party and I make the rules.

After all, the outrage we should feel here isn’t about gay dating it’s about the manipulation of an all-to-willing media and people who would rather believe in grand conspiracies and imagined enemies than take the time to think about the messages they’re being fed and how realistic or reasonable they are.  This is just one of many examples as to why we all need to become better (and more critical) media consumers.

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