04 Oct Saint Laurent Condom Advertising Causes A Stir

Saint Lauren condoms are now a thing and only available at the Parisian concept store, Rive Droite. The luxury condom costs just a couple EUR and have already caused a bit of a stir. YSL took down their Instagram post which honestly wasn’t bad at all, I guess there’s still a bit of taboo out there when it comes to sex.

While they’re not the first luxury company to sell a branded condom, they certainly weren’t afraid to be a bit cheeky and generate some buzz. I thought this would make for a good example for large luxury brands and how they can use the power of their name to drive marketing hype from something honestly kind of generic.

I mean, it’s just a condom…right?

It sure is, but when you have the clout like YSL, it makes it so much easier to turn something simple into a powerful marketing result. In their case, they have got the fashion world talking for a bit and that’s a bonus for them. This side note in an overall larger luxury marketing campaign has provided extra PR to their advantage.

This is a smart play for a couple of obvious reasons. The first being it’s something that causes a bit of a stir, as any viral attempt should. Secondly, this is a secondary PR angle you can use to keep the discussing going about your main campaign.

The result alone for the condoms looks to be a huge PR success.

This level of press would cost six figures easily if you were to pay for it one by one. It is getting harder and harder to stand out each day so make sure you utilize that marketing budget in a smart way. You might be surprised to hear that a large portion of the bigger luxury marketing clients we take on are not taking advantage of their clout.

Not only with their viral marketing and PR attempts, but with large social media follower bases not being properly utilized. YSL in this instance didn’t push it very hard on social media. While they didn’t need to, they do have well over 10M social media followers across the big networks.

Putting that cheeky viral marketing angle to work, they could have definitely amplified this news to millions more with a bit of paid ads and organic growth.

What I find a bit strange on top of it all is the fact that a near naked man in an advertisement gets taken down, yet they currently have several half naked female models on their Instagram feed. That in itself is perhaps another PR storm for another time, but at the end of the day it’s all about getting people talking and they’ve done just that.