Break for a Catfight Message

Many of you - specially the Americans, remember the Miller Lite beer commercial on January 2003 depicting two beautiful women starting an argument, fighting with bare hands, dropping themselves in a water fountain and ending half naked in a cement pool. It was the most famous use of a catfight to promote a product and raised a lot of debates inside and outside the media advertising community. Here goes the uncensored version, just in case you have missed it.

The catfighters were Kitana Baker and Tonya Ballinger who became outright famous after the commercial exhibition on prime TV spots like the SuperBowl.

More recently, in 2006, the women fashion retailer French Connection used the same concept to promote the chain, using ads like the outdoor picture and clip below.

I had thought of writing a few lines commenting the use of women fighting to atract consumers. But somebody else had already done that with competence and depth. It was written in the year 2000, but it is still actual. It is called "Fighting in Ads" and it was done by Barbara F., a woman comentator of the ladies wrestling scene. There you may find opinions very similar to mine about the subject.

For many years, Barbara run a very neat site, informative and balanced. A tribute image of her Combative Women site is available here.