What dwindling condom usage can teach us about advertising.

Don't call me Don Draper or anything, but damn am I good. If talk of sex makes you squeamish, skip this edition and tune in next week... While I won't say that I'm becoming one of the "best" minds in advertising, I feel quite okay with claiming that I'm becoming one of the more "interesting" minds in advertising, offering both a style and perspective that brands and people find valuable. This is reflected in the wide-ranging number of industries I work in. I've written advertising for industrial paper shredders, jewelry, generic Viagra, SaaS (a whole lot of SaaS), real estate, roof repair, local pharmacies, ketogenic snacks, protein shakes, cookies, vodka, whisky, rum, children's toys, children's books, single-serving honeycomb, designer-grade lighting, Kava, Kratom, marijuana, bed-in-a-box mattresses, the list goes on. I'm good. I'm not yet great. But, I'm good. And, what makes me good is that I don't approach advertising with the mindset of... "How can I sell a shit ton of [xxx]?" I approach advertising more so with the question of... "What the hell is going on in so-and-so's mind?" Condoms and the ongoing failed attempt at advertising them is a fantastic example of why one should approach this craft looking for an answer to the latter question rather than the former. My generation seems to be wildly adverse to condom usage. So adverse that highly-paid admen have been hired by brands like Durex and Lifestyles to figure out why people aren't "wrapping up" before having a good romp in the sack. The answers these admen have come up with are reflected in the advertising these brands are putting out. Trojan hired white, slightly nerdy rapper, Lil Dickey, to promote their condoms by talking about how gross it is that people are having sex without protection and how this can in turn lead to STDs. This has been the angle condom companies have been taking for decades. You wear a condom because: 1. It lowers your risk of catching something. 2. It lowers your chance of pregnancy. Some condom companies have spun out from the herd entirely and have created this theory that the reason their customers aren't wearing condoms is because their massive members can't fit inside of them. So, they've gone on to create Magnums. And, since these Magnums aren't big enough, Magnum XLs. I played sports in middle school, high school and college, which means I've showered with lots of men and I can attest that all men are not created equal in this southern region. However, I think the Magnum XLs are more of an attempt to cater to a man's vanity and the sawed-off shotgun he "believes" he has stowed away in his trousers that, for the life of him, he can't seem to fit within a rather stretchy material. But, maybe I'm just jealous because I have a very normal-sized dick and wear very normal-sized condoms and being that all men give themselves an inch or a mile in this department, this probably means I'm below average. Fuck. I'm getting long-winded. So, sizing out condoms like t-shirts didn't really work so the admen went back to the drawing board and, get this, had the epiphany that customers aren't wearing condoms because the thickness –– sorry boys, not you, the rubbers –– are stealing the pleasure from the act. So, they designed thinner condoms, which I find to be a hot crock of shit for two reasons... For one, many of the men I know are "dry jerkers", meaning they don't masturbate with any lotion, which I myself find to be heinous and a bit disrespectful to one's member. I imagine even caveman would split open an Aloe plant or grab some melted down Mammoth fat before milking their snake. That said, having sex with a condom easily feels 3x- 5x better than masturbation, especially for the dry jerkers. For two, we're talking about making love to a woman here, which one could argue would still be pleasurable if both parties were wearing diver's suits. God wasn't a stupid man in creating us and he knew that in order to keep humankind from "not having sex" and going completely extinct, he needed to work some magic. He worked this magic, brilliantly, in the space between a woman's legs, knitting it with some fabric you can only find in an air-tight safe somewhere in the back of his office guarded by a dozen German Shepherds and sharks with lasers on their heads. So, those two reasons essentially rule out the "ultra-thin" selling point of condoms. Do rubbers dampen the experience? Sure. But, they might take the magic from a 10/10 to an 8/10 and I don't care what anyone says... Ice cream is still ice cream. All that to say, here's the real reason men and women aren't using condoms with the dedication that they should... *drumroll please* One or both parties have had an embarrassing experience where they've been hot and heavy and in the mood and they have to hit pause as the man awkwardly fumbles around for a condom in the dark and sometime in this fumbling, loses his erection. This is wildly embarrassing for the man because his ego is as delicate as a dandelion and his masculinity is almost completely and entirely tied to his performance in the bedroom. (Gals, why do you put up with us?) And, it's wildly embarrassing for the woman because it makes her feel as though there is something intrinsically wrong with her to cause the kite to lose altitude. And you know what is far scarier for both men and women than potentially catching an STD (at least when in the heat of the moment)? Feeling unsexy. So, if these condom companies were smart, they'd shoot a commercial with Little Dicky not targetting "the size of the condom" nor "the thinness of the condom" nor "the risk of STDs and pregnancy when not using condoms". Instead, they'd make light of something that happens all too often in the bedroom... They'd make a joke of it all. They'd make men feel less like asshats when their cocks take a nosedive and perhaps even help them tie their masculinity to something a bit healthier than the flesh hanging between their legs and, they'd help women realize that absolutely none of these miniature catastrophes have anything to do with them. (This latter bit might feel as though it should go without saying. But, it doesn't. I'm fortunate to have very close friends that are women and one of them, just the other day, opened up to me about having a couple at-bats where two separate male lovers whiffed and I had to explain to her that these whiffs had nothing to do with her and everything to do with them.) With this approach to advertising, we'd laugh about it and we'd joke about ways to get that kite back up in the sky once the wind has died down and then we'd all fuck each other's brains out, protected. Advertising isn't selling. Advertising is understanding people and, perhaps, it's practicing empathy. But, I digress. By [Cole Schafer](. P.S. I know what you're thinking... What did I get myself into? Baby, you got yourself into the best show in town and I'm not even charging admission. Keep scrolling. [Fucking tweet me or something.]( "Why did the customer toss the condom-flavored Snow Cone?" "Because it was too rubbery." That joke sucked. But, [my copywriting guide]( doesn't. It's called "Snow Cones" for short (but sports a much longer title) and it's 10,000 words of hard-hitting advertising and writing know-how that'll make your pen feel like a wand as you magically move a shit ton of product with the written word. [Get on some Harry Potter shit.]( Subscribe to Chasing Hemingway so I know it's real. If you want more of me in your inbox (and I swear on everything holy that wasn't a sexual innuendo), you should seriously consider subscribing to [Chasing Hemingway](. It's a shorter way more emotional version of Sticky Notes, that only goes out to a small group of paying subscribers each week. If we were in an elevator and I had to explain it to you by the second floor, I'd say it's a newsletter about writing and life and how the two exist so magically together. Then, I'd electric slide out the doors and wink at you whilst firing my finger pistols. [Bam. Bam. Bam.]( Tito's fucked up this Nashville billboard (and if they have any sense they'll hire me). It’s 9 p.m. on a Wednesday night. I’m sweating my ass off. I’m sweating so hard you’d swear I’ve just eaten seventeen Seraño Peppers and then went Salsa dancing with the devil’s mistress somewhere in Miami, Florida in the middle of summer. I haven’t, of course. I’ve just kicked the shit out of myself on the treadmill for twenty-minutes and then powered through an upper-body circuit. Now, I’m outside the gym, sucking wind and water, leaning on my vintage ‘89 Range Rover. I’m feeling good. Damn good. Until I look up in disdain and see this clusterfuck of a billboard, hanging above my head; a clusterfuck that Tito’s decided to drop on one of East Nashville’s busiest intersections sporting the wildly underwhelming lines… “Smooth, I mean really smooth.” Who farted? Somewhere I read –– and no I can’t remember where –– that funny people don’t tell people they’re funny, they show them. This is something everyone in advertising should write down. If tomorrow I were in a room with whoever handles Tito’s advertising, I’d ask them to start naming shit that is “smooth”… “Cashmere... Lambswool.” “Good. Good! Now keep going.” “Suede... Freshly shaved legs.” “Stupendous! Now, give me something ‘smooth’ that I’d like to eat …” “Butter.” And, folks, that’s what this billboard should have read… ["Butter."]( "Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face." John Updike wrote somewhere... “Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.” As someone who is so far away from being anything close to a celebrity, the quote feels laughable to reference here; if not preposterous. However, where I think it’s applicable to us mere mortals is this idea that we become known for being someone and we become good at being this someone and we may even become “rich” at being this someone and then, one day, when we catch a glimpse of this someone in the mirror staring back at us and we no longer recognize this someone or no longer want to be this someone, we frantically go to rip away this proverbial mask and it feels akin to peeling off one’s face with a butter knife; because the mask has lost the string that previously kept it fastened and has eaten and even healed into the face like the fabric of clothing atop some open oozing wound. This is why, perhaps, I tend to be anti-personal branding and hesitant of anyone who begins treating themselves as if they are an enterprise-in-miniature. While a brand, an actual physical brand you see festooned on your favorite products should be concrete and unwavering, I worry that when we begin to apply this same language to humans, we create a problem. Or, at the very least, we create a difficult question to answer… Were humans created to remain “the same” over the course of an entire life? I think not. To me, a huge aspect of the human experience is choosing who you are, while accepting and even being open to the fact that you will likely change and you will morph and you will shed skin and you will become a slightly different, fuller, truer variation of yourself as you move closer to the version you were created to eventually embody. I think the few of us lucky enough to deal with the good, the bad and the ugly of “celebrity” miss out on this experience. And, I’d argue the rest of us non-celebrities who fall victim to this strange age that celebrates the individual brand and influencer, miss out on this ongoing metamorphosis as well. (While, at the same time, missing out on the mansion and the second mansion and the seven Maseratis and the caviar and forever being the most important person in the room). Celebrity or non, we shouldn’t feel inclined to commit to being “someone” and remaining that someone for a lifetime –– we do this and we risk the mask eating into the face. But, I digress. [And we ain't talking Halloween.]( P.P.S. If this newsletter made you weak in the knees, you can share it with the world by selecting one of the four icons down below... [Send it.]( [Send it.]( [Tweet it.]( [Tweet it.]( [Share it.]( [Share it.]( [Post it.]( [Post it.]( Copyright © 2021 Honey Copy, All rights reserved. A while back you opted into a weekly email called "Sticky Notes". Remember? 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