YT bikes has launched a deliberately mysterious ad campaign that aims to get people talking and wondering what this love/hate JEFFSY hashtag campaign is all about. Hannah reckons it must be a penis operated dropper post…
By Hannah
Who is JEFFSY? Do I hate them or love them? I’m really not sure I care either way. All I’m interested in is where I can get the number of that hot guy in the advert? I mean, clearly his girlfriend doesn’t appreciate him enough. For those good looks I’m prepared to put up with all kinds of unreliability, selfishness and potentially even infidelity. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but if he wants to talk to me in those dulcet tones while nuzzling me with that stubble then he can talk about whatever he likes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y2Ywn9UPNc
Can’t see the video? Click here.
And his girlfriend – I wonder if she’d tell me what hair products she uses, because I really like her hair. I might even take a picture of her with me next time I go to the hairdresser. How does she get that wave without the frizz? And those lamp shades in the back ground are really cool – it can only have been her that bought them, not him (I mean, men don’t do interior design, do they?) so I wonder if she’d tell me where she got them. It doesn’t seem like she’d be too upset at me for taking him off her hands, does it?
Whatever this is an advert for, whatever or whoever JEFFSY is, it’s not for women, is it?
It may not contain naked women, but this advert is still sexist – unless this really is a product which only a man could use (like a penis operated dropper post). Why would a company choose to pitch its whole campaign on the basis of ‘women are going to hate this, blokes are going to love it’, excluding half the population from their potential market? We’ve already seen Maxxis and SixSixOne retreat from their misguided marketing campaigns. According to the countdown on the JEFFSY website, YT have 29 days to put this one right.
Happy International Women’s Day folks.
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“Why would a company choose to pitch its whole campaign on the basis of ‘women are going to hate this, blokes are going to love it’, excluding half the population from their potential market?”
Because it’ll get lots of interest & free advertising like this?
Maybe it’s a piece of men-specific clothing? Y’know, kinda like the women-specific Icebreaker top that you just reviewed…
OK, its unlikely. But not impossible
@ratbag:
I certainly hope you aren’t suggesting that a sexist ad campaign is in any way the same as reviewing a gender-specific piece of kit.
Do I care?
Nicely put Hannah. And yeah, nice lamp shades.
FFS, we don’t even know what the freakin ad is about and it’s getting slagged for being sexist!!
It could be anything, and they could also be planning on bringing out a vice versa ad before the launch. Get a grip people.
How can a thing that you have no idea about be sexist if you don’t actually know what the ad campaign is actually about yet……
Also the Jeffsy website shows images of people holding “I hate Jeffsy” signs. Of which one is a motorbike, one is a dog and two are kids (1 boy and 1 girl). So it’s not only women that hate Jeffsy it seems.
Do stw really think that is sexist, time to cancel my subs I think!
Grow up.
Protective codpiece
I don’t really care and the bloke is a totally annoying idiot, for that reason only I’m out.
Lets all take offence at everything shall we?
When will STW realise that they and all the other MTB publications out there are driving more and more sexist (if that’s what this proves to be) ad campaigns?
From my experience, at least 85% of riders are men. Of those I would imagine maybe 5% will get offended by sexist ad campaigns, and maybe 5% will actually actively like them. The remainder couldn’t really care one way or the other.
So, companies bring out sexist ad campaigns, and they’re maybe going to put off up to 20% of their audience. Balance that with the massively increased exposure they get to the remaining 80%, and it’s surely got to be worth every penny?
How many people are even going to remember Maxxis, 661 and YT in relation to a sexist ad campaign six months from now? Next to none, I’d guess. Far, far more will just remember the brands generally next time they’re shopping though.
Net result? Huge win for the brands, and the more people whine about the campaigns in the press, the more successful the campaigns will be.
Can someone explain to me how this is is sexist? Stereotypical yes but why is this product not for women? Would we be saying the same thing if the roles were reversed?
Sorry, but even for the liberal hand wringing nonsense we often see on here, getting offended at that is laughable, and only focuses on one side (the girl).
For me, as mentioned above, it’s poking fun at male and female stereotypes. The girl is being portrayed as quite girly, and the guy is a classic bro dude. There’s humour in both sides.
However, the advert in no way indicates that the product, whatever it is, is not for women.
I’ve tried to find something sexist in this and failed miserably. It’s a great marketing campaign though. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Whatever Jeffsy is, I already want it.
I’ve already seen this campaign on plenty of other media outlets, none of which called YT out for its dodgy subtext, so the idea that STW shouldn’t be giving them the oxygen of publicity is pretty threadbare.
As for the advert, it’s just more of the usual “girls like shopping, men like biking” claptrap. File it next to those “My grilfriend told me it was me or the bike…” memes cloggging up Facebook.
Just marketing and won’t be surprised when the idea is flipped and it’s some sort of equality promo.
@kermit While I’m sure you would love ‘your experience’ to be considered in the same class as actual academic research, it’s not. Your numbers make absolutely zero sense, and aren’t based in any sort of reality about cycling participation between men and women.
Women represent the fastest growing segment of the entirety of the cycling industry. They also are responsible for the vast majority of household spend, and what they don’t spend, they influence.
If you want the sport to grow, please recognise what those of us in the industry already know: it’s women who represent the sustained longevity of the sport, not MAMiLS and MAMBAs.
@Punkass
If there is any significant academic research that counters (or indeed supports) my personal experience, though, maybe you could be so kind as to put up a link to it? I’ve just spent half an hour on the web searching for some, and the closest I could get were numbers from the CTC showing that men cycle on average three times as often as women, and four times as far, but that’s across all forms of cycling. I couldn’t find anything specific to mountain biking later than about 2012/2013, but those generally had women as between 15 to 25% of mountain bikers, which would support my anecdotal experience. but I assume you have access to something more recent which shows significantly different numbers?
Alternatively, how about we pop along to Swinley, Bedgebury, Haldon, the Forest of Dean, Peaslake, Box Hill, Cardinham or anywhere else with a major cycling population at any time of the day/week of your choosing, stand there for a few hours and mark down the number of male cyclists and the number of female cyclists we see? I’ve only listed the places where I’ve formed my own personal experience, but I’m perfectly willing to accept that there may be other venues where the balance is significantly different. We could create our own academic research!
If you want to move it away from mountain biking, you’re welcome to come and do the same on my London commute. There, the number of women amongst the commuters has definitely increased dramatically from when I first started commuting 5 years ago, but then again, 5 years ago, I doubt it was even one in twenty. It’s easy to be the fastest growing segment in an industry when you’re starting from such a low base.
As for women being responsible for the vast majority of household spend, even if is true, what does it have to do with anything? The vast majority of household spend (again in my experience, but maybe I’m a statistical anomaly?) tends to be on the mortgage and bills which are a joint expense, and admittedly my wife is the one who places the Ocado order every week, but I’m sure you’re not including that as a factor in women controlling more of the household expenditure, as it’s surely utterly irrelevant to discretionary spending on hobbies?
Now, if you’ve got statistics which show that women are responsible for the vast majority of spend in an activity where by any statistics or anecdotal observations I can find, the vast majority of participants are male, then I’d be happy to agree that responsibility for household expenditure is pertinent to the debate, but I suspect (yes, again, based on my experience), that my wife and I are fairly typical in that we both agree a certain matching discretionary spend on our hobbies, and beyond that, neither of us have any influence whatsoever on how the other spends their money.
Ultimately, though, there is only one statistic which will tell me if I was right or wrong in my overall statement, and that is whether Maxxis and 661’s sales figures went up or down by more or less than they did off any other marketing campaign which didn’t get vastly more media coverage than they actually paid for?
As for who represents the sustained longevity of the sport, I’d be fascinated to know why you think mountain biking is so different to just about every other sport I can think of except netball?
Increased female participation in any sport is a good thing, and is good for the sport overall, and all sports are quite sensibly aiming to increase the level of female participation, but I’ve yet to see any suggestion from any other sport that their sport doesn’t have any sustained longevity without them, so what do you think makes mountain biking different?