Help Us Find The Right Consumerist T-Shirt Model
It's slow this morning. There's no tips; our feeds run dry. It seems like the nation's companies have hardly screwed up at all over the last couple of days. This makes us fear for our jobs.
So impromptu poll time. As you know, we recently held a contest for you guys to help us find a slogan for an official Consumerist t-shirt. "I'm thinking of writing a strongly worded letter" topped your choices, followed closely by "I'm thinking of never wearing this t-shirt." We also threw in "Mystery Shopper", because secretly, Ben and I hated the winning slogan.
At the start of the contest, I told Ben that I would find us a sultry female model to stretch a too-small baby t-shirt across her heaving, lustful mammaries.
Sex appeal sells, or so we're told. And hell, I'm a guy. I had two likely candidates for such a model. One is my friend Kathy, a tall, leggy and athletic ex-stripper. However, her assets, as they are, would probably be sneered upon with contempt by the Russ Meyers set.
There is also my friend Stacey, Kathy's voluptuous opposite, whom I approached the other day. My pitch: "We're getting a t-shirt designed. We need someone to model it. And, being totally blunt, if that girl had spectacular breasts, it would probably sell better."
But Stacey's response was interesting: " I'll tell you something about myself, as an intelligent, hip woman. I check out a lot of sites selling one-off custom shirts by print artists and such. And I LOVE it when they use flat-chested models. They're not pulling out bells and whistles, they're using real people, and they're letting the shirt stand for itself. If you're looking to sell women's-cut t-shirts, you should consider throwing in some smaller, and larger (as in fatter) models. It really catches women's attention, because we don't see them used as models all that often."
I always listen to a woman with a spectacular rack, or at least pretend to. So I did some research. And whaddayaknow: outside collaboration.
So here's the question: when we finally get this t-shirt designed, what kind of sultry babe do you want to see model it? Petite and pretty? Voluptuous and burlesque? An upright hog waving her trotters through the arm holes? We'd like to market this baby right. Let us know in the comments.
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Comments:
We'd like Fran and Jon to wear it!
I have a few friends that are goth/punk/suicide girls style fetish and/or burlesque/pinup models that are smoking hot. I bet I could convince one of them to do it. They have open accounts on myspace with pics. http://tinyurl.com/kd3v4 and http://tinyurl.com/k9uko
At the very least the links I just left make for good possibly NSFW eye candy. Enjoy.
I should mention that the links above may be NSFW, but they make for some good viewing. Enjoy.
Someone can delete that, and this. For some reason my first post warning about the NSFW thing took longer to go up than I thought it should. I'll stop spamming now.
What about that hairy guy in the American Apparel ad on your sidebar? :)
God, aren't those ads awful?
I'll go one better. Use me. I'm 6' tall, about 260lbs, unshaven, unkempt hair, and I have smallish man boobs. Everything you need for a good marketing campaign.
There's something twisted about the Consumerist having to worry about marketing...
Using multiple models is probably not really a good idea; it's too obviously an effort to appeal to everybody. If you want to catch people's eyes, maybe you could do a picture of some sort of monster wearing the "Mystery Shopper" shirt, or an angry barbarian wearing the "strongly worded letter" shirt. The cognitive dissonance will grab attention and make them laugh; that'll pull them in.
It's a lot easier to read a t-shirt on a flat chest.
So it sounds like what you need is a woman of petite-to-average height, with boobs but not huge boobs, not fat but not terribly skinny either, cute enough but not so cute that people roll their eyes at your obviously pornographic intentions.
Unfortunately, I'm terribly busy lately and I don't really like having my picture taken. Oh well -- good luck!
The word you're looking for is "corroboration" not "collaboration".
That said, I'm gonna need to see some pics of potential models before I make my decision. I require a wide assortment of nude and non-nude.
You can email them to...
I agree with your friend Stacey and Mary Marsala. The cute/hip girl is much more appealing than the model/porn star. It also gives me a much better idea of how the shirt might actually fit me.
God, aren't those ads awful?
Yes. Yes, they are.
I don't care who you use since I won't be able to fit it anyway.
Using Rubenesque models kinda suggests that being obese is healthy and ok. It's not.
I'll do it. As long as it can wait a week - I'm going on a cruise tomorrow! :P
The guy who draws Questionable Content (www.questionablecontent.net), Jeph Jaques, has some pretty good models for his shirts.
I would love for you guys to model the shirts instead of some other model. It just seems to be the most consumerist friendly thing to do to me...
Get Sasquatch.
Get all Gawker Artistsy on us, guys. Throw some mannequins wearing your shirts out of a storefront display. Surround them with some rubble and some smoldering promotional flyers. Bam, there's your model, perfect plastic tits and all.
Oh, and then make it sepia. ABSOLUTELY make it sepia.
ICK GOD. Please no Suicide Girls.
There's nothing more unattractive than Seattle's special brew of unattractive pierced-skin waifs.
Your best bet for models is to release it exclusively to consumerist commentators for the first batch-- then get some action shots out in the field and upload the best ones to flickr and let the flickr exported flash slideshow be your advertisement.
You want to know who looks sexy in a tight t-shirt? Dudes.
We fags do read blogs, you know.
you can use me.
I'll also model the shirts - OH!
Using Rubenesque models kinda suggests that being obese is healthy and ok.
Has anyone ever looked at a model and thought, "Gee, that model looks healthy"? I'm not saying that every model looks sick or anything but, in general, they don't have the reputation of being health-conscious.
you can use me.
How about you do my shopping for me?
ICK GOD. Please no Suicide Girls.
There's nothing more unattractive than Seattle's special brew of unattractive pierced-skin waifs.
Seconded.
What kind of shopping? I would be happy to do clothing or wine shopping, as long as I have a large budget & earn a commission.
I would even take care of all your music & book buying needs, though the commission may not earn me as much.
Anything else, you're on your own...
Don't overthink this.
If you want to market to straight guys, get a cute model. Cute usually entails boobs, although there are rare cases where it doesn't.
Can you just use some hot naked girl then just lay the t-shirt somewhere next to her?
I second the idea of you guys modeling the t-shirts yourselves, or getting shots from commenter's wearing them.
Why not have three models? One each athletic, voluptuous and Rubinesque?