YNOT – The mainstream is growing wise to the porn industry’s marketing tactics. We’re surprised it took so long.

A flurry of mainstream and adult coverage resulted this week after Pornhub released a statement indicating disbelief that CBS would reject a “clean” Super Bowl ad from an adult entertainment company.

Really? Pornhub brass was surprised a major mainstream television network would turn down $4 million rather than face the inevitable overwrought backlash from social conservatives?

Pornhub got more than $4 million worth of publicity out of the stunt and didn’t have to pay a dime, which according to more than one analyst was the motive behind the move in the first place. The coverage may have been primarily negative, but to paraphrase P.T. Barnum’s alleged attitude about publicity, nobody in adult cares what the press says about them as long as they spell the names right.

Pornhub’s management “of course knew the spot would be rejected,” BuzzFeed’s copyranter wrote. “This is not new footage that they shot for the Super Bowl, and they had no plan to spend the nearly $4 million in media money CBS is getting for a [30-second] slot during the game. What they did plan on was sites like [BuzzFeed] posting the video.”

Trade journal Business Insider came down even harder on Pornhub’s shenanigans, labeling the tactic a “bogus stunt.”

“While many believe the hype that big, bad CBS blocked poor, well intentioned Pornhub’s G-rated spot, the fact is that this is more likely a cheap stunt to get free publicity,” Laura Stampler and Julie Bort wrote at BusinessInsider.com. “There’s no way this ad could have played in the Super Bowl. It’s not even the right length. Pornhub’s ad is 20-seconds long … which simply makes no sense.”

Frankly, mounting a promotional campaign that stands no chance of success, and then shouting “foul” when the effort is rejected as expected, is nothing new in the mainstream, and it certainly isn’t innovative in adult. As BuzzFeed pointed out, PETA played the same game in 2009 by proposing a naughty Super Bowl ad called “Veggie Love.” In 2011, infidelity dating site Ashley Madison proposed a racy Super Bowl ad that likewise was rejected with the same summary reasoning CBS applied to Pornhub’s attempt:

[QUOTE]Network Standards do not permit advertising related to pornography. Therefore, we cannot accept your submission.[/QUOTE]
In both cases, folks are still talking about the failed campaigns, so the companies involved obviously received more than a casual return on investment. The self-inflicted figurative black eye was more than worth any momentary pain. (And we doubt they felt any pain at all, since both PETA and Ashley Madison, like Pornhub, undoubtedly expected exactly the results they got.)

A few adult studios, notably Vivid Entertainment, have employed a similar tactic with equally positive results. By publicly offering celebrities ungodly sums of money to appear in adult movies, knowing the celebrities won’t even bother to respond, adult studios keep their names circulating in the mass media. The tactic increases brand recognition, though at some point fatigue is liable to set in, leaving consumers rolling their eyes and muttering “not again” at the mere mention of a company’s name.

Still, according to Business Insider, “promoting an ad as a ‘banned’ spot is an increasingly popular marketing technique … [and] it is a decent publicity strategy.”

“I remember one year when the networks wouldn’t allow one of the Bud Light spots in the game, so Bud actually released it online as, ‘the Super Bowl ad the networks wouldn’t let you see,’” Tanin Blumberg, an account director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and a Budweiser Super Bowl ad veteran, told Business Insider. “It was pretty smart … got about 1 million views on YouTube in just a few days.”

It’s difficult to argue with success.