RENWL

No, not by Ashton Kutcher and his dumb tv show—by the folks behind the Mancrunch Superbowl ad campaign. This afternoon we came across an interesting post on Transracial.net which said the whole Mancrunch Superbowl ad thingy was a big hoax. You know about it right?  That story that’s been going around the blogosphere and online news about the gay dating ad that was rejected by CBS even though they accepted an ad from pro-life/anti-gay group Focus on the Family centering on pro football player Tim Tebow’s mom’s decision not to have an abortion.Yea, well, the whole is turning out to be a publicity stunt.

We’re confused however. Transracial.net is right about the fake part. What we’re confused about is who actually was behind it. According to Transracial, they say the site is owned by a woman stripper from Toronto named Simone Dadoun-Cohen. Apparently the enterprising ex-stripper turned businesswoman has several adult sites including Mancrunch, ArrangementSeekers, Cougarife and Established Men. What makes the evidence so damning is that all the sites along with Mancrunch bear the same Toronto media contact number for all of the sites.

That didn’t satisfy us. Something was amiss. So we went through all the big news reports over the Mancrunch flap and we too, came up with an interesting connection. A woman by the name of Elissa Buchter has been acting all along as spokesperson for the Mancrunch Web site and has been quoted in numerous news reports. We decided to do a little bit of research on Miss Buchter. Lo’ and behold—-turns out Miss Buchter is an employee for an LA-based PR firm Bridge And Tunnel Communications. Problem is, they no longer exist. But Miss Buchter does. And so does another spokesperson Dominic Friesen. The blog Grandcentral Station had been suspicious of the whole thing right from the gate. So much so that after some sleuthing they were able to track down Mr. Friesen and actually got a Q & A answered about the ad via email. Check that out here:

1.) Prior to the decision from CBS there were already reports that the spot had been rejected – primarily from bloggers covering gay issues. Was this outcome expected?

Not at all.  Especially given the fact that they accepted the Focus on the Family spot we thought CBS would eventually accept ours given the public attention.

2.) What do you think you could have done from a creative standpoint that would have forced CBS’s hand into accepting your commercial?

Based on their response to this, we don’t think they would take any commercial we created that promoted gay dating.

3.) Do you think a similar spot for a hetero equivelent (i.e. Fling.com, AshleyMadison.com or something like that) would have been accepted by CBS? After all, Mancrunch doesn’t look to be like Match.com or eHarmony – it’s about hooking up, right?

You’re comparing a dating site for single men to a cheating site like AshleyMadison.com?  Nowhere on our commercial do we mention sex or on our web site, for that matter.  We definitely think that if the spot contained a man and a woman kissing on the couch, there wouldn’t be an issue.

4.) What agency produced the ad? The concept and production values of the spot, quite frankly, don’t seem to be all that “out of the box” or expensive – why did it take the agency so long to produce your commercial for the largest advertising stage on the planet (the Super Bowl)?

We produced the spot in-house.  You’re right the spot didn’t take that long to produce.  The reason we only submitted the spot on January 18th was that was only when the web site was ready.  We literally just launched the web site last week.

5.) Why isn’t the URL for your web site included in the ad?

To be honest, we posted an earlier version of the ad. Here is the actual version.

6.) You now have over 5,000 inbound links to Mancrunch as a result of the publicity surrounding this situation with CBS. While it would have been nice to spend the $2 million (or more) to run an ad in the Super Bowl, do you still consider this effort a successful launch?

The effort is not even close to over.  If we can’t advertise in the same places that Match and eHarmony can, this is just the beginning.

7.) Do you intend on running any other television spots on network television this year? In your opinion, do you think the programming would influence the likelihood of a network to accept your creative (for example, would an ad produced for the Academy Awards be more likely to be accepted to run versus an ad produced for the Winter Olympics)?

Absolutely.  We plan on running on network television this year and we’re confident that any program that allows alcohol, erectile dysfunction and other online dating ads will allow ours … which we thought included the NFL.

But Grandcentral Station blog found loopholes in Freisen’s story so big you could drive Mac trucks them. Some of them are listed below:

The ad for a web site without a URL.  What?
Yeah, the first version of the ad I saw didn’t have a URL in it … I swear it didn’t.  The Mancrunch team sent me a new YouTube link, this time with an ad that included a tiny little “.com” after the Mancrunch name in the spot.  Not much better, but better.

So, which version did they send to CBS for evaluation?  How could they expect their spot to be taken seriously if they didn’t even get their own web site into their ad?

Mancrunch was surprised by the rejection.  Really?
Bloggers covering gay issues were reporting that CBS had rejected Mancrunch’s advertising overtures yesterday.  I’m sure some of the editorializing on their part was based on an assumption of  pre-determined bias against an advertiser reaching out directly – and obviously – to the gay community.  I can understand that.  After viewing the spot, it seemed to me the commercial was made to be rejected – and, for a stunt like this, the spot HAS to be rejected to resonate in sympathetic communities – so I wasn’t surprised by CBS’s rejection.

But according to Mr. Friesen, they didn’t see it coming.  Really?  He claims that since the right-wing Focus on the Family spot with Tim Tebow was accepted, the Mancrunch team thought their spot would eventually be accepted given the public pressure (brought about in an afternoon).  Really?

Whether you agree with Focus on the Family’s anti-abortion/anti-choice/pro-life (you pick) spot or not, it’s clearly a spot advocating a public policy/political stance – not selling a dating service.  Mancrunch is clearly presented as a commercial venture.  They’re not advocating public policy related to mashing with your football buddy over a bowl of chips.

Was the stunt a success?  Mancrunch says “no” so loudly it has to mean “yes.”

The team at Mancrunch has to be eating up this publicity like crazy.  The FOX News hit was critical to the campaign’s success.  It legitimized the story even though it wasn’t a real story – even I could see that – but FOX News didn’t care.  Next to abortion, gay rights is pure gold to FOX.  It winds the stems on their faithful and drives tons of web hits and viewers.  The guys at Mancrunch know this and played FOX News like a fiddle.

And, I’m guessing, the guys at FOX News didn’t mind a bit.  They just laid back and took it like … well, like that baldish guy with the green jersey in the spot.

Once the fire was lit, other sites started jumping in.  My guess is this thing will continue to burn for a few more days and when it’s all said and done, Mancrunch will have tens of thousands of inbound links and an established place atop the gay-dating world.  Whatever that is.

We’re gonna agree with the folks at Grandcentralstation.com. Putting this aside however, it hasn’t been lost on us that some BIG LGBT and mainstream blogs have been PUNKED BY TIME! The list below is shocking in terms of who covered this story without picking up a phone or going online to get the info verified.

So let’s go over the who’s who PUNKED honor roll list:

HEY GUYS, YOU’VE BEEN PUNKED!

Towleroad: CBS Considering Gay Dating Ad Featuring Kiss for Super Bowl

Pam’s House Blend: GLAAD Calls Out CBS Regarding Super Bowl Ad

Huffington Post: ManCrunch SuperBowl Ad REJECTED: Gay Dating Site Ad Denied By CBS (VIDEO)

Mashable: Dating Site For Gay Men Enters Super Bowl Ad Fray [VIDEO]

Perez Hilton: Gays Turned Away From Super Bowl!

Americablog: CBS accepts homophobic religious right group’s ad for Super Bowl, turns down gay one

Dan Savage Slog: Maybe CBS Rejected This Superbowl Ad for a Gay Dating Website…

There’s hundreds more but we can’t type them all here. But get the drift. A lot of respectable bloggers and journalist didn’t bother to look under the hood aka fact check. Now if you want investigative and researched details from bloggers WHO DID take the time to factcheck and get some solid answers you can go to:

Transracial.net: DUPED: ManCrunch Super Bowl Ad is Sexy Stripper’s Hype Hoax

Grandcentralstation.com: The Mancrunch kerfuffle gets ever more “kerfuffley”

Tell ‘em RENWL.org sentcha:)