The ad, currently airing only on the Sky network in Europe, features a narrative with two women at a party. One, a cute blonde, rolls up in her unhip car and enters the party. She makes eye contact with a smoldering brunette draped on the couch, who returns her gaze. The brunette beckons the blonde over to a bedroom, takes off her shirt, and lays provocatively on the bed. The blonde brings out a black blindfold and ties it around the brunette. But before things get too kinky, the blonde puts on the brunette’s shirt, grabs her keys and steals her car—a pink two-door Renault.
Any viewer with a pulse can detect the lesbian plot of the ad, a fact that prompted the Italian state-run TV network RAI and Mediaset, the station run by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, to ban it. Gay groups in Italy have called the add offensive to lesbians. A spokesman for Publicis, the firm behind the ad, defended it by saying “We wanted to create an advert that was original, enjoyable and at the same time not vulgar and I believe we have achieved that.”
Watch the commercial here.
