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Lifestyles spins common marketing tropes to be more meaningful

Ansell condom brand Lifestyles is teasing mobile video viewers to continue watching its preroll ads by taking an ?unnecessary censorship? strategy in a new video campaign. 

Lifestyles' new campaign hopes to redefine the meaning of sexiness, and encourage individuals to look for deeper qualities in a mate. The Smart is Sexy campaign is flipping the cliché of sexy marketing with banner ads and videos that appear as such at first, but encourage users to view or click on to reveal its deeper meaning.

?The inspiration for ?Smart is Sexy? came directly from our key demographic, the millennial consumer,? said Jeyan Heper, president and general manager of Sexual Wellness Global Business Unit at Ansell. 

Changing clichés
Lifestyles' campaign will kick off in 2017 with a series of banner, video and preroll ads. While on YouTube the preroll videos can be skipped, its content entices viewers to continue watching.  

Millennials are used to being marketed at with sexuality in the forefront, in a very superficial way. Lifestyles' campaign changes that by playing on the typical sexualized ad.

Smart is Sexy preroll ads appear before YouTube videos. The video opens with an attractive woman saying, ?Honestly, I prefer a man with a big p...,? with the last word bleeped out. 

Text appears that reads, ?Wanna know what turns girls on? Don?t skip!? If users avoid the skip button, the ad will continue on revealing the bleeped word as ?personality.? 

More text plays on the idea that smart is sexy, revealing the words ?Smart = Sexy.? The ad then reminds users to stay with Lifestyles Condoms. 


The videos work with the autoplay function on the Facebook timeline, to ensure the largest audience. For Facebook videos, users will have to click on the sound button to hear the bleeped word. 

Smart is Sexy videos appear with both men and women, so all consumers will be enticed to hear what is sexy from all different perspectives. 

Lifestyles' campaign is being paired with an on-site activation in New York City that debuted in Washington Square Park on Nov. 18. A vending machine will dispense a free condom to users after answering questions related to sexual health. 

The vending machine will be stationed at Webster Hall for a month before traveling around to other locations around the United States. 

Condom campaigns
Ansell and Lifestyles were recently prompted by World Aids Day to share interactive social campaigns, competing with Durex, but both took drastically different approaches with the latter taking emojis into its own hands and the former sharing donations. 

World AIDS Day took place on Dec. 1 every year to raise awareness and funds for the fight against HIV and these condom brands are fitting the fight into their campaigns, as their products help the fight against the spread of the disease. While Durex revamped its fight to include a safe sex emoji into the Unicode keyboard by having iPhone owners use the umbrella icon in place of a condom, Ansell gave away free condoms based on how many shares its hashtag receives (see more). 

?In various focus groups, millennials explained to us that self-confidence and sexiness are directly linked, and young adults need to ?smarten up? by recognizing  that sexiness does not only come from superficial beauty, physical exposure or sexual performance, but from feeling self-confident and sexy about yourself as you are,? Ms. Heper said.