Evolve?

photo / James Fail 

You may have seen the commercial: a slick bar populated by extremely hot women and (literal) pigs sipping on martinis. The pigs are making sexual advances and the models are obviously not impressed — they are, in fact, disgusted. But then one pig goes to the restroom, purchases a Trojan condom, and is suddenly transformed from a swine into a hunk. And now one of the models is more than happy to talk to him and, presumably, sleep with him. That’s the topical crux of the evolve campaign — don’t be a pig.

You may have also encountered this campaign in your favorite bar. There are coasters like the one pictured here. On the back it classifies three different types of males: Puritan, pig, and man. The Puritan wouldn’t know what to do even if he had a condom on; the pig likes to “roll in the hay” without any protection; whereas the man “never leaves home without a love glove.” Trojan also puts stickers on the bottom of your pint glass. It’s a pink circle with two black ovals side by side in the center. Now every time you take a drink and some one sees the bottom of your glass, it looks like you have a pig’s snout. It’s fairly funny the first time.

Additionally Trojan has started an evolve national tour where they will travel to 65 campuses across the nation promoting sexual health. They just stopped by UT last Thursday, where they begged people to “evolve” and had them sign petitions to increase the number of condom ads during primetime TV. This isn’t just your basic ad campaign. This is big money and a lot of manpower.

I’m all for the promotion of sexual health and using protection — don’t get me wrong. Overall I think what they’re trying to achieve is a good thing.

But I also think this bit of ad wizardry — essentially branding the word evolve — is particularly funny. Imagine: The condom company is telling you to evolve by using a condom every time you have sex. It’s like opposite day or bizzaro world. They’ve hijacked the term evolve and made it so that condoms become the agent of “evolution” — an “evolution” that is instantaneous, costs about 50 cents, and can be purchased in the bathroom at most bars. Yummy.