The Standard/Erwin Wurm, Guide to political incorrectness: Pee on the carpet
Celebrity-favorite The Standard Hotel has launched an advertising campaign that caused a stir – one image shows a woman urinating on a carpet in front of a man.
The photo series is titled “How to be Politically Incorrect” and also shows a woman leaning over another woman to spit into a bowl of soup and a man sticking his head into a woman’s sweater.
The photographs were taken by Austrian artist Erwin Wurm and were commissioned to promote the five locations of André Balazs’ Standard Hotel in Los Angeles, Miami Beach, New York and (two) in West Hollywood.
According to the New York TimesAndre Balazs said Mr Wurm had “a wonderful sense of humor” and he “embodied the spirit of the brand.”
The hotel’s creative director, Claire Darrow Mosier, said she was a fan of Wurm’s “Politically Incorrect” series because of its commentary on the boundaries of “public space,” and she hoped the “weird, ridiculous images” would “catch people’s attention” when reading magazines.
David Hershkovits, editor and publisher of Paper Magazine in New York, said that you have to look at the ads “twice: you look at them, and you look at them again.”
“It’s a good thing for advertising,” he adds, if it “makes people stop and look.”
He added that the advertising gave the impression that the standard hotels were “for a certain type of person”, namely members of a “creative community”.
The New York hotel’s famous Boom Boom Room has hosted hundreds of parties for numerous celebrities, from Lady Gaga to George Clooney.
What do you think of the ad? Did the shock tactics go too far? Or is it clever, attention-grabbing and perfectly targeted at customers who “get it”? Leave your thoughts below…
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