Fires. Corporate scandal. Terror warnings.
Fires. Corporate scandal. Terror warnings. Wondering what else is in store?
That, in its entirety, is a billboard that Mr. Cole and his ad execs have seen fit to raise along the West Side Highway. It's a plain black field with white lettering in 4,000-point type or whatever size is required to permit viewing from the highway below. I see it every time I'm heading out of the city via the George Washington Bridge, and every time I see it, I spit the same venomous response: Shut up, Ken! I hate that billboard. And I hate Ken for putting it there.
This is Kenneth Cole the fashion designer, not the late Kenneth Cole, former Director of the Domestic Council under Presidents Nixon and Ford. His series of subway ads for the Reaction clothing line are ubiquitous here in New York: lots of trendy bewhiskered young men and waify young women thrusting various Kenneth Cole products at the viewer with airy coolness. None of the models have any pores; it's quite astounding.
The demonstrable idiocy of using a veiled reference to 3,000 dead people to increase brand awareness of a line of unremarkable clothing isn't what sets me off when I read the billboard's blasé question. It's the attitude. Oh, yawn...Cole says. The American mainland was attacked for the first time since 1812. Thousands dead. Been there, seen it, bought the tee-shirt. Then, as an afterthought: Hey, why not buy one of my shirts?
Just when I thought I couldn't be more irritated by this fatuous, ill-considered bit of billboard blather, I visited his site. There, I clicked on the "Cole Poll." And I was asked:
The government's recent terror warnings:
o For our own protection
o For their own protection
Results of the "Cole Poll" are 35.3% "our" and 64.7% "their," with a little over 5,000 respondents.
I'm not as disturbed by Cole's oh-so-hip ads as I am by the genetically engineered blowjob dwarfs that Steve Madden uses uses to hawk his particular brand of crap. But Madden, at least, stays within the familiar and warped advertising realm of distorted womens' bodies. Cole, on the other hand, seems to think that he has something to say. If there is an industry less qualified to have an opinion about anything that matters, I can't think of it. Except perhaps the porn industry. But the last time I checked, that industry wasn't putting up billboards.
The fact that 65% of the respondents to the "Cole Poll" felt that the government was covering it's own ass doesn't bother me. There's some truth to that, I'm sure. But who, exactly, is Kenneth Cole to say so? How does he reconcile his snarky, lefty-cynical West Side Highway billboard-thinking with the Burmese sweatshops that produced his clothing? Or the fact that his shoes are manufactured in China (long recognized as a bastion of human rights and political freedom)? I suppose that if you can justify an allusion to vaporized corpses as part of a marketing campaign, you can justify anything. Or, it seems, you can justify it until you get caught.
Tommy Hilfiger, at least, was using the American flag to sell his wares before September 11, so his recent spate of red-white-and-blue ads weren't out of character. But Kenneth Cole is another sort of creature. He doesn't get to go sit in the corner with Harrelson, Baldwin, and Cruise and think about what he did. Those folks are just grinning empty-headed yutzes who are used to being listened to, and mistake that sensation for actually having thoughts. Kenneth Cole has decided that the dead of September 11 are fit salespeople for his products, and that the carnage of that day is the equivalent of "fires," "corporate scandal," and other "current events."
No, Ken doesn't get to face the wall with his fellow-travelling dolts. Ken has to go have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with each of the families of the September 11 casualties, eating with a different family for each meal. That's three meals a day, every day, for nearly three years.
He can pick up the check.
Just for kicks, you can write the company here.
