The Lure of the Animal: Selling Bikes with Cat Power

I'm rarely impressed by a bicycle advertisement. Specialized's "I Am Specialized" campaign leaves me cold. (Mostly because it sounds too much like "I Am Special," which implies you might need training wheels to ride. And by training wheels I mean this kind, not the kind you use so you don't wear out your race tires.) Cannondale's "Feel It" slogan just creeps me out. (I don't wanna feel it! For chrissakes, just put it away!) And as for the rest, it's mostly just the usual claims of enhanced lateral rigidity and vertical compliance, perhaps accompanied by some vague technical data they might as well not even bother with since you know and they know that it's the decals that are ultimately going to sell the bike.

This is why I'm a huge fan of the current Look marketing campaign. Look have dispensed with both catchy slogans and dubious claims in their attempt to convince you to buy their products. Instead, they've harnessed the awesome marketing power of the panther:

OK, well, there is a slogan: "Unique bike for unique people." But the slogan's really small and hidden in the corner. Instead, this ad uses a picture to tell a story, and it's one to which we can all relate. Credit Acricole sprinter Thor Hushovd has just returned from a soiree of some kind, and he's taking his pet panther for a walk before turning in for the night. They are clearly in the upscale section of a cosmopolitan city. It could be London, or Paris, or Monte Carlo, though presumably it's someplace where they don't have leash laws and where it's legal to keep predatory animals as pets. As they perambulate, they pass a display case containing a Look frameset, and Thor gives it a glance that says, "Yeah, I have one of those, and I'd be out riding it if it weren't late and I weren't walking my panther." It's the same glance all men recognize as the one you get from other men at red lights when you're on your bike and they aren't because they've been roped into going clothes shopping or something, so they look at your bike condescendingly as if to say, "Yeah, I've got one of those too. Not only that, but it's better than yours and I'd be dropping you right now if I weren't on my way to Old Navy." Maybe they even whisper some quip about your bike to their girlfriend, who couldn't care less and who gets mad at them for thinking about bikes when they're supposed to be together shopping.

I think we can all agree that this is an incredibly persuasive and seductive ad, precisely because it taps into the profound connection that humans and panthers share. Previous examples of the power of the human/panther bond in our culture are:

The Pink Panther;

The Black Panthers;

Owens Corning PINK Fiberglass Insulation;

and of course LL Cool J.

Clearly Look did their homework before launching their panther ad campaign, because they've evoked LL Cool J's "Walking with a Panther" album, which heretofore stood as the apex of panther-themed marketing campaigns. This incredibly successful album contained such hits as "Goin' Back to Cali," "I'm That Type of Guy," and "Big Ole Butt." Like the Look ad, this picture tells a story. It's also the story of a man and his giant cat, both of whom have a fondness for jewelry. There's also a fascinating ambiguity. Is the panther in LL's employ, or vice-versa? And what's in the suitcase that would need to be protected so fiercely? Is it LL's metaphorical cool? Is it the master tapes for the very album we're looking at? Is it spare four-finger rings? Whatever it is, it's beguiling, and it's definitely the template for the Look campaign.

And Look didn't just stop with the Hushovd ad either. They've also got a few with just the panther. Here's the panther pacing anxiously in the Look display case, having perhaps just killed and devoured his keeper:

And here's the panther admiring Look's latest pedal offerings:

By now you're probably thinking that Look didn't actually use a real panther for these photos. Not only would that have been dangerous, but the cost of a professional panther wrangler alone would have put them well over budget. But I have it on good authority that they did in fact use a real cat. However, they did need to resort to trickery in order to get it to stare so longingly at those pedals:

(Rotisserie chicken--works every time.)

And here's the panther admiring the frameset:

If you're suspecting more baiting-and-switching here too, you're right:

Heavens to Murgatroid! Yep, that's effeminate cartoon mountain lion Snagglepuss with whom our panther is so taken. In fact, if you look closely you'll see he's even fogged up the glass! It would appear then that our black panther may be a pink panther as well. (Or a female panther with poorly-functioning gaydar.)

Not that there's anything wrong with that.