Playing with notions of censorship, condom brand Skyn worked with Sid Lee Paris to make “Uncensored Pleasures,” a series of intimate moments, shot home video-style, where all the genital bits are erased and replaced by—wait for it!—product placement.

We dig the details: The amateur vibe, that landline nobody has anymore, and those moments when people set up the camera and others pose for it, which implies recording consent.

As a millennial who grew up among countless stories of leaked erotic tapes, my feelings about immortalizing anything remotely sexual verge on the conservative. Once something’s recorded, it can escape your control.

The climate’s different today, with a dating scene dominated by swipe-left apps and businesses like intimate content subscription service OnlyFans. Even teachers and doctors are using it. Such activity may raise eyebrows. But insightful conversations develop about what we expect from folks in terms of maintaining a viable living (and the degree to which society actually appreciates these professions in terms of appropriate remuneration and time investment).

Of course, millennials are not the group growing up in this brave new intimate world. In conversations with Gen Z singles, I’ve encountered more lax attitudes about recording and sharing intimate content, which seem driven by how exposed we are in every sense. “So much of our data is already out there,” one said to me. “My sexy stuff is drowned out by everyone else’s. Who cares?”

Sid Lee’s also betting that more complex conversations, driven specifically by censorship, will transform intimate content into educational opportunities and diversify what we think of as “normal” and “sexy.”

“While intimacy is becoming more openly discussed in all its forms amongst people and in the media, social media censorship remains significant when it comes to pleasure and sexuality,” say creative directors Céline & Clément Mornet-Landa. “This isn’t conducive to understanding all facets of sexuality and does not encourage open dialogue. Inspired by pictures on social media, censored with rectangles, we wanted to leverage censorship into an opportunity and turn what might previously have stopped conversations from taking place into something that drives curiosity.”

The most salient censorship conversations are centered on Instagram’s determination of what constitutes sexual content and what doesn’t. Sexy, borderline exploitative shots of women, for example, aren’t generally considered problematic.

But breastfeeding or anything betraying a female nipple—in a sexual context or not—is. That makes it hard to normalize and educate around breastfeeding, not to mention pregnancy and other nuanced conversations.

While the topic of censorship is larger than this example, it’s a good illustration of how intimate censorship in social media intersects with common assumptions about morality and sex education … which is all over the place, depending on where you live, even as access to porn proliferates freely.

The economic exploitation of sexuality isn’t sexuality itself. And that’s not a judgment about porn. It’s a fact, the same way advertising is the economic exploitation of creativity, and not creativity itself. If you can access porn easily, but the places where you get news and a sense of norms—social media—bans content specifically designed to educate you about the nuances of pleasure, what does that leave you thinking about sex?

“Uncensored Pleasure” was directed by Ludovic Gontrand of Hamlet. The film isn’t meant to feel pornographic; it’s meant to trigger a sensual curiosity, fueled by the censored squares. Those little product shots provide their own little education: Normalizing the use of sex toys, say, or illustrating different kinds of couplings that benefit from lubrication.

It’s not work that will change the world, but maybe one or two people will stop thinking of sex toys or lubricants as forms of rejection, and view them instead as facilitating more pleasure, exploration and comfort. That’s worthy, and weirdly revolutionary.

CREDITS

Advertising Agency: Sid Lee Paris
President: Johan Delpuech
Head of Creation : Céline and Clément Mornet Landa
Senior Art Director: Adriana Guix
Head of Production: Laetitia Neves
Account Director: Margaux André
Account Manager: Mai Lan Nguyen
Head of Social Media: Cassandre Géron
Head of Strategy: Bruno Lee
Strategic Planner: Leah Daymon

LifeStyles – Skyn
Global Marketing Strategy Director: Marta Toth
Global Brand and Content Manager: Michele Martinelli

Production: Hamlet Paris
Director: Ludovic Gontrand
Director of Photography: Clement de Hollogne
Producers: Clément Martorell, Ella Guionneau
Post-producer: Thomas Floch
Film Editor:: Jérome Pesnel
Sound Studio: Supersavant
Photography: Felix Dol Maillot
Production Studio: Shot In Mars

“Valentine’s Day has always been a binary heterosexual celebration,” observe Sid Lee Paris creative directors Céline and Clément Mornet-Landa. “It was about time that a brand ended that by including everyone.”

“Vallentine’s Day” isn’t an exceptional piece on its own, but context helps. The work follows last year’s “Pleasure Is an Endless Exploration,” thanks to which we’ll never hear the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” the same way again.

Both ads tug at some childlike element of our brains that we’ve tucked away—the kids’ song, the basic arithmetic and overall nudge toward openness (including toward ourselves). It feels like Skyn’s passing on something we often forget about love and sex: that maybe at its best, it’s playful and curious, more sandbox experiments than candles relentlessly burning at both ends.

The latter can be fun, but exhausting at scale. And the world of sex post-Covid could use some high-spirited reinvention right now.

Prior to these works, in 2020, Skyn enlisted porn stars Stoya and Dale Cooper for an even steamier series of ads, focused on the importance of not skipping foreplay. Under Sid Lee’s orchestration, “play” definitely feels like the operative red thread here. And while this position is subtle and slow-burning, it’s an approach that can iterate almost endlessly, and it ultimately distinguishes Skyn from other brands. 

The campaign ran in the U.S., U.K., Italy, Poland and France, locally adapted with voiceovers narrated by regional influencers.

CREDITS

Advertising Agency: Sid Lee Paris
President: Johan Delpuech
Executive Creative Director: Sylvain Thirache
Creative Directors: Céline and Clément Mornet Landa
Art Director: Olivier Bodet
Copywriter: Max Harrington
Producer: Julia Bakola
Head of Strategy: Bruno Lee
Strategic Planner: Leah Daymon
Operations Director: Antoine Ferrari
Account Managers: Paul Pieuchot
Client : LifeStyles – SKYN®
Global Marketing Strategy Director: Marta Toth

“You can skip an ad, but don’t skip foreplay,” the stars inform us at the, um, climax of the ads, shot late last year, before the pandemic erupted.

Since young men receive much of their erotic “instruction” from porn, Sid Lee drafted X-rated icons to deliver its message, posting the :45s as pre-rolls on PornHub, of course.

“All sex education cannot be thrown on porn, but at the same time, porn could play a bigger role—instead of just focusing on penetration,” Cooper says.

What’s more, Skyn puts a fresh twist on condom how-to’s with a leaflet of foreplay instructions, inviting folks to share their techniques using the hashtag #dontskipforeplay.

Click the image to enlarge:

Now, for some elusive reason that may take years of painstaking, scientifically rigorous sociological study to fully fathom, porn- and sex-related stuff has grown really popular in lockdown.

Trojan recently unzipped a DM contest via 72andSunny with free lube and vibrators as prizes. And with March sales for its Womanizer toys rising 263 percent, Wow Tech Group engaged The Garden for billboards popping up around Canada:

CREDITS

Advertising Agency: Sid Lee Paris
President: Johan Delpuech
Executive Creative Director: Sylvain Thirache
Creative Directors: Céline and Clément Mornet Landa
Art Director: Romain Lehur
Copywriter: Julien Sens
Copywriter: Kim Froissant
Head of Production: Thomas Laget
Producer: Marine Redon
Head of Social Media: Alexandre Ponte
Social Media Manager: Jeff Deconchat
Head of Strategy: Bruno Lee
Strategic Planner: Patrice Zamy
Managing Director: Mehdi Benali
Group Account Director: Héloïse Marchal
Account Managers: Trisha Mitra & Paul Pieuchot LifeStyles – SKYN

Vice President Global Marketing: Matthew Groskorth
Global Marketing Strategy Director: Marta Toth
Global Brand Marketing Manager: Nicolas Woussen

Production: Cream
Director: Sergi Castella
Producer: William Blanc
Line Producer: Boris Briche

Music Supervision: benzēne
Music: “Choose Me” by The Debonettes, courtesy of Numero Records and Kobalt Music

“We wanted to make erectile dysfunction something you can talk about—so we looked for ways to make the subject less taboo,” Sid Lee managing director Mehdi Benali tells Muse. “A playful pack seemed like the way forward. Besides, we were keen to communicate, with one single asset, everything we had to say about this product and our brand. So this made perfect sense.”

Benali adds: “It was really about taking E.D. pills out of the boring pharmaceutical packs, and putting them into something that you could have on your night stand without feeling ashamed. We wanted it to be sleek, premium and sensual at the same time. We didn’t want the tacky, overly colorful design, but rather something that reminds you that intimate relationships are great, even if you need a little extra help.” 

Client and agency have turned in impressive performances many times before, mainly for the flagship condom brand. Efforts range from a global guide to the world’s best hotels for making whoopie, to a messenger bot that analyzes the sexiness of voices, to an epic sci-fi spot about the importance of human connections in tech-obsessed world. 

For Arise, guys who fill out an online questionnaire will receive shipments once a doctor OKs the prescription. 

Each package is about 4.5 inches high. Luckily, size doesn’t matter. Right? 

CREDITS

LifeStyles Global – SKYN
Chief Executive Officer: Jeyan Heper
Vice President Global Marketing: Matthew Groskorth
Global Marketing Strategy Director: Marta Toth
Global Brand Lead SKYN: Nicolas Woussen

Advertising Agency: Sid Lee Paris
Chairman & Executive Creative Director: Sylvain Thirache
President: Johan Delpuech
Creative Directors: Céline & Clément Mornet-Landa
Managing Director: Mehdi Benali
Creatives: Julien Sens, Romain Lehur
Strategist: Patrice Zamy
Account Director: Héloïse Marchal
Account Manager: Trisha Mitra
Head of Production: Thomas Laget
Producers: Marine Redon, Julia Flusin, Laurie Jeanson
Head of Digital Production: David Bismut
Digital Producers: Romain Debain, Clément Cassajus

Design
Designer: Jean-Baptiste Fastrez

Film Production
Analog studio