Clever Marketing for Mancrunch.com

CBS announced that it was rejecting an ad from mancrunch.com that was to be shown on Superbowl Sunday.

I have no opinion if CBS is actually being discriminatory here.  Their excuse is that they are unsure if the company, who I have never heard of before, could actually pay for the 30 second spot which runs for about $2.5 million. This sounds somewhat fishy to me because it seems the owner of mancrunch.com is willing to pay cash for the ad.  The wording on the rejection is

"CBS Standards and Practices has reviewed your proposed Super Bowl ad and concluded that the creative is not within the Network’s Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday,”

Now I've watched the ad.  It really is not that bad so long as you are comfortable with two men kissing which I suppose many people are not.  But seriously, I've seen WAY worse ads featuring heterosexual couples so I find CBS' flimsy excuse pretty bad.  Why not just come out and say, "We don't want to show two homosexual men kissing."  At least they would be being upfront and honest about the whole situation.

But that's not what I'm actually here to write about.  The one winner in this I can assure you is mancrunch.com.  Seriously, they are getting a ton of free publicity and it is all very positive.   I've been on several sites and there is a lot being written about CBS' rejection.  At the end of it, mancruch.com will probably get more press for their rejection than they would if they had actually been able to run the ad.  And they won't pay a dime!

I'm not saying that mancrunch.com did this on purpose but it probably could not worked out better for them.   That actually would be  pretty interesting tactic.  Just make a commercial so racy that it does get rejected.  People are just too curious and in this day and age they will go out of their way to find the commercial online.  I'm pretty sure it is something that Godaddy has been trying and I'm surprised  more companies don't try this.