Observers of the Commission’s occasionally excellent offerings on EUTube – see some favourites of mine here – cannot have failed to notice that among the  top twenty most viewed videos on EU Tube, several unashamedly use sex as their selling point.

"French Favorite" on EUTube

This is pretty up-front in the no. 1 all-time hit, with nearly eight million views, officially  entitled “Film lovers will love this!“, but better known, thanks to a UK tabloid press storm, as the Commission’s “porno” film. So much so that YouTube requires the viewer to confirm he/she is over 18 before allowing it to be seen.  However, sex appears in several other EUTube hits. The no. 2 video features a more romantic view of love, often drawing on the same films we see in the “porno” video. (The same video, with its concluding slogan in French, reappears at no. 6, retitled “French Favourite”. It’s probably vey British-tabloid of me to see the new title, combined with the couple a-bed thumbnail, as innuendo, but there you have it…).

The excellent “Chemical Party” video (no. 3) also has its dose of sexual chemistry, though here jokily and geekily, but after that we have to go down to no. 15 to find “Make love, not CO2“, which conclusively demonstrates that guys who ride bikes and buy sustainable flowers for their girlfriends are stand a better chance of a satisfactory conclusion to the evening than their less ecological brethren. This video does not go where the porno film goes, but it does, I note, feature attractive young bodies in baths and showers.

I note this because I see a common factor here – bathroom fittings. This post was in fact prompted by watching the video at no. 17 in the hit parade, “Imagine what you could do“, a video which had done the rounds in the office, but to which my attention was again drawn by an acquaintance working in the Commission department concerned, DG Enterprise.

This video, which does not hold back on the innuendo, features a sophisticated, sexy lady entering the men’s showers, where, accompanied by a sultry soundtrack and after shedding some clothes, she makes a beeline for the hunkiest of the hunks and… well, watch the video – I’d hate to spoil it for you. There is a twist, and it involves a small, foil-wrapped plastic item.

Somehow, the Commission brand doesn’t say “sex” to me

So why, apart from a desperate impulse to boost traffic to the blog by using the internet’s favourite search terms, do I bring all of this to your attention?

It’s really to ask a question: how well do sex and the Commission mix? In communications terms, I mean…

Somehow, the Commission brand doesn’t say “sex” to me. I would be amazed if there were anyone in the world who would spontaneously make that association. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the Commission has a propensity for using sex to sell its policies. Actually, it probably doesn’t do so very much, but it has done so quite successfully on occasion. The mechanism, beyond the simple fact that sex has always worked in advertising, is probably the surprise/shock factor: “what? the Commission did THAT?” For an organisation which still apparently has cold feet about venturing onto Facebook, it seems a surprisingly bold strategy, probably illustrating (if I read the runes correctly) the fact that someone inside the Commission has taken to heart the adage “better to ask forgiveness than ask permission”.

But the nagging question still remains – is this the right way to go? Is it appropriate for an EU institution to sell its wares this way. Without wishing to sound prudish, I would have some hesitation in considering either the “porno” video or “Imagine what you could do” as suitable viewing for my pre-teenage offspring. And should a public institution be purveying adult-only ads?

I have to note in passing that the Commission is careful not to cross certain lines of political correctness. Different sexual orientations are represented, and there is a post-feminist aura about the women – these are not the girls gratuitously draped over the bonnets of fast cars beloved of seventies advertisers, but empowered twenty-first century women. Indeed, it transpires that the shower woman is no model, but the real thing, the young entrepreneur behind the foil-wrapped plastic thing. (A thing which, one notes, also serves an eminently politically correct purpose.)

Is the Commission onto something good, or is it’s brand-defying dabbling in steamy advertising techniques bound to end in tears?

All of which said, the shower-lady advert indisputably relies for its effect on one’s very adult imaginings of the reasons for which she gets close and low-down with a guy in a shower. I can’t imagine this being done by governmental communicators in many (at least non-Nordic) Member States, and I don’t see the European Parliament, for example decidedly less hung-up about Facebook, going that way either.

So it’s an open question, is the Commission onto something good here, or is it’s brand-defying dabbling in steamy advertising techniques somehow bound to end in tears?

Really, I’d be most interested to hear what people think.