Eircell swells testosterone levels in promoting new pocket-sized phone

Just as blondes in swimsuits on car bonnets are happily becoming a distant memory, men are being firmly established as the bimbos of "ad land". To date, they have mostly been either window-cleaning hunks or gormless dads, but Eircell has gone further and is using a bit of a man's body (with the obligatory hint of underwear peeping above the jeans) to advertise its latest telephone.

To compound things, the body has no head or legs, which in media studies-speak would be regarded as "classic sexual objectification".

The full-page ad, which is very different in style and tone from Eircell's usual marketing strategy, appeared in recent Sunday newspapers and was a once-off promotion on behalf of the telephone company to advertise a pocketsized phone.

According to Eircell, the ads, which also ran a version with a similarly clad female, were designed to appeal to 20-somethings "who are confident and very comfortable with their sexuality".

It is reasonable to assume that even those high-spending 20-somethings wear their tops when making mobile phone calls, so the rationale behind the bare torso, with that hint of Y-fronts, is a bit confusing.

While Sunday readers have been exposed to "phone man", motorists are getting a more distracting vision in the new Triumph lingerie 48-sheet poster campaign that started on Sunday and will be on more than 30 poster sites in Dublin for the next two weeks.

The ad, which originated in the brand's UK agency, Delaney Fletcher Bozell, is running in UK women's magazines and on poster sites and features Channel 4's Big Breakfast presenter Kelly Brook wearing a bra from the new Flaunt range.

According to Triumph, the ads will feature only on billboards here and not in women's magazines. This is confusing, given that targeting is the big word in media planning and that these posters are obviously reaching a wider, more general, audience than the bra-buying female public.