Pornhub Is Planning A National Advertising Campaign - And It Wants You To Help
Far from shying away from the limelight, the site is holding an open contest asking people to submit their best ideas for clever, safe-for-work advertising to run on television, in magazines, and on the Web. The winner will be awarded a one-year contract to be the site's first creative director.
"There's a lot of people who really invest in the brand, and we really want to give them an opportunity to create for it and then become our creative director," Pornhub.com Vice President for Marketing Corey Price said. He said that users frequently email him with their own marketing ideas.
If you're unfamiliar with Pornhub.com (or prefer to pretend you are), think of it as a sort of YouTube for porn - a place where people come to upload and watch free adult content, some of which has, of course, been pirated. According to the online tracking company Quantcast, the site was visited by around 15 million unique users each month as recently as this past fall.
In the past year or so, Pornhub, one of a handful of adults sites owned by the company MindGeek, has worked to bring itself out of the shadows and into the mainstream. In early 2013, it (perhaps facetiously) sought to purchase a Super Bowl ad, but CBS rejected the ad on the grounds that CBS' policy prohibited it from promoting pornography.
More recently, the brand has won mainstream media attention for its Insights blog, which offers fascinating statistics about viewing habits and how those habits are influenced by major events (for instance, the site received a surge of traffic from Denver after the city's football team lost this year's Super Bowl).
But despite this influx of publicity, mainstream media outlets could very well refuse to allow Pornhub to advertise with them. Chauntelle Anne Tibbals, a sociologist who studies the pornography industry, said major corporations are unlikely to touch an ad for adult content, and that Pornhub's contest was likely a publicity stunt.
Indeed, when we reached out to Spike TV, a cable network Pornhub executives said they would like to advertise with, a representative was quick to shoot down the idea of such a partnership.
"We would never allow Pornhub advertising, ever," said David Schwarz, Spike TV's senior vice president of communications.
Nonetheless, Price, the Pornhub marketing executive, said he was confident the site would be able to work out deals for its media placements, noting that Playboy has been a mainstream brand for years and that Brazzers, a paid site also owned by MindGeek, had its own billboard in Times Square.
In the event that television networks are not receptive to letting Pornhub advertise with them, Price said the new creative director would still be an important part of building the brand's identity and shaping its communications strategy.
"In the worst case scenario, resourceful minds will ultimately prevail," Price said. "Following our rejection by CBS, we were able to leverage traditional press and social media to garner exposure that rivaled, if not surpassed that of ads featured in those primetime slots. In short, while I can't tell you exactly what we have up our sleeves, you can trust that we will be heard no matter what."
The contest will accept applications through March 31, with submissions being posted for the public to see at pornhubcampaign.tumblr.com. As an idea of what the site is looking for in a creative director, Price said this early print ad submission had the appropriate level of humor without being explicit:
