Half-Naked Men With Flowers

Warning: this blog post is all about flowers. Pretty, harmless and aromatic flowers. It also involves half-naked men with their bulging shoulders, glistening chests and abs so sculpted you could grind meat on them:

 Which demographic do you imagine this is aimed at?

It’s a shame they all look quite goofy and awkward but just look at the biceps of that one at the back, in the knee high shorts and the wellington boots. And the guy on the right with the curly hair? With the slight stubble and shoulders so broad he could be used as a raft? Wait, what was I talking about? Something about flowers? Alright, fine, after the click let’s start talking about flowers or whatever.

Much like the time I wrote about the Cravendale milk adverts despite being somewhat allergic to milk, I also get hayfever. At some point I should stop writing about stuff I’m allergic to. At this rate I’m probably also allergic to half-naked male models but I’ve never had the opportunity to find that out.

With autumn and winter on the way you’d be forgiven for thinking this isn’t exactly flower season. The Flower Council of Holland would like to change that. For the next couple of weeks they’re running a campaign to encourage people (mostly women) to think about broad-chested muscular young men without shirts and then associate those feelings with flowers. The whole thing revolves around this interactive movie.

 Click here to pop over to the interactive movie for a few minutes

It's much better than the last interactive advert I reviewed (if that's the right word).

There’s something reassuring about listening to an older lady perv over younger men. The ‘boys’ are clean-cut and friendly-looking, with some effort made to give them some simple personality traits. I don’t want to pick on people for their appearances and of course I’m no oil painting myself but just look at these two:

Sure they’re sort of handsome looking, but bear in mind they're being helped by professional lighting and photoshop. What’s really putting me off is that they just seem so sleazy, more so than the rest of the admittedly-sleazy advert (which is at least slightly cheeky and twee).

On one of their various websites they explain how they’re working in conjunction with a lot of florists nationwide. They’re always offering a wide variety of resources to download for free, from printable posters to images for banner adverts. You can also download the posters and leaflets for the ‘What’s Your Favourite Flower’ campaign too, if you’re a florist or for some reason you’re into half-naked men holding flowers.