Let’s talk about sex: More specifically, sex, and sports, and video games, the perfect trifecta of ways to grab a certain demographic’s attention, and hopefully dollars. Watch the above commercial, a web-only spot for 2K Sports’ Top Spin 4. I’ll give you a couple of minutes if you need some time alone.
What you will see here is Serena Williams wearing a butt-bearing leotard panties, thigh-high boots, and tons of makeup and jewelry, playing video game tennis against a leather-clad actress (before an athlete, or a gamer). There is rhythmic grunting. Splashed in big words over Serena’s come-hither face is “The World’s Sexiest Tennis Player.” This isn’t about sports any more.It’s about sex, and that’s not new. More than any other sport on earth, women’s tennis has achieved a parity with its male counterpart, and it’d be foolish, naive or deliberately PC to deny that a large part of that is sex appeal. What is new is marketing that aspect so blatantly, and it’s no wonder the commercial is getting buzz.
2K Sports, the publisher, is distancing themselves from the ad of Serena Williams wearing a butt-bearing leotard panties. Their official statement: As part of the process for creating marketing campaigns to support our titles, we pursue a variety of creative avenues. This video is not part of the title’s final marketing campaign and its distribution was unauthorized.Don’t you believe it, just like you shouldn’t believe the ad was only posted to YouTube by the commercial’s actress. That video was made private, but it’s since been reuploaded by Serena Williams’s YouTube channel. This is a conscious media effort to get people talking, and it’s working. (For her part in the matter, Serena Williams’s agent replied to our inquiries with a “no comment.”)
It’s a surprisingly novel concept: targeting the young male demographic with a female sport. As men are the much larger consumer of both video games and sports, it’s just good business sense. But this ad, so in-your-face with its look-at-my-fishnet-stockings cinematography, makes crystal clear who the game, and to some extent the sport is marketed to.
It’s wholly unlike the family-oriented ad campaigns of women’s soccer or basketball — “bring your kids to the game!” Meanwhile, you probably wouldn’t watch the 2K commercial while your wife is in the room.
But the question then becomes, are you pushing the sport at all? I see this, and I’m thinking more DOA Volleyball than anything else. Dead or Alive, a typical fighting game known for its bouncy-bouncy female fighters, later decided to make two whole games devoted to those bouncy-bouncy fighters doing nothing but play beach volleyball.
Serena Williams shows no one can compete with her curves in a bikini pics
