I was at dinner with a new client late last week…we gave him the full dog and pony show, trotting out a bunch of people that would be “his team” and taking him to a typically trendy steakhouse and rooftop bar to get on his good side. It was fun but, as usually happens, dragged on a little too long.
And, as the only single guy there, I was hounded by the client and some of the agency muckety-mucks to go hit on any one of the large number of cougars who had congregated at the bar.
They were trying to live vicariously through me. This happens a lot.
Eventually they got drunk enough to let it drop…or they were embarrassed when I told them, after they loudly giggled and pointed and said “there’s another cougar for you,” that these women knew what ‘cougar’ meant, it wasn’t some secret guy code thing anymore. Either way, I was off the hook. Thank God.
But…the cougar thing has stuck with me. Like in this ad by Forsman & Bodenfors for Volvo’s new “eco-friendly” cars:
The positive of this ad and campaign is that it’s a pretty quick get…the negative is that you’ve just put a real, wild, I’ve-seen-you-on-Animal-Planet cougar in a suggestive pose on top of a Volvo.
That’s even less enticing than the dried out boy toy-hunting “cougars” at the bar.
And why is the cougar posing suggestively anyway? Did she eat the human bikini girl and is trying to hide it? Is this some sort of weird Euro beastiality thing that I hear rumors about after my friend came back from visiting his cousins in Germany back when we were in junior high? Or does Volvo make such green cars that animals use them like a peacock uses its tail, as some sort of mating ritual prop to show their copulatory (I made that word up…I kind of like it) fitness?
Oh, and what ever happened to body copy?
