• by Shankar Gupta , June 9, 2005

A sexually charged ad for the TBS reality series "The Real Gilligan's Island" appeared last week on the major left-wing political blog DailyKos, sparking protests among the site's liberal readers and leading some to form a splinter blog, "Women Kossacks." At the same time, as with the Paris Hilton ad for Carl's Jr., the controversy surrounding an ad campaign appeared to lead to an increase in traffic at the site hosting the ad.

The ad itself was posted through BlogAds, an ad-serving network of roughly 700 blogs. Starting June 1, BlogAds served the ad to a handful of pop culture and television blogs, as well as blogs with male-skewed demographics. Among the blogs served with the ad was DailyKos, one of the top progressive political blogs on the Web and one of the largest--with weekly traffic of 2,775,481 unique users, according to creator Markos Zuniga.

In a conceptual mash-up, the ad, entitled simply "Pie Fight" and created by Stun Creative, combines characters from the old TV show "Gilligan's Island" with the concept of the popular "Catfight" ad for Miller Lite beer. "Pie Fight" depicts original TV characters Mary Ann and Ginger fighting about what makes a good coconut cream pie; they ultimately throw pies at each other, wrestle, and get rinsed off with a bucket of water.

Richard Turner, the senior director of interactive marketing for Turner, Inc., said it was meant to be humorous. "It's an obvious parody," said Richard Turner, the senior director of interactive marketing for Turner, Inc. "Hopefully, people will enjoy the gag and be a part of that entertaining piece of video."

But not all of the DailyKos readers, variably referred to as "Kossacks" or "Kos Kids," were amused. Many of Kos' female readers expressed offense and even outrage that the ad, which they say objectifies women, would be hosted on a progressive site like DailyKos.

Zuniga issued a scathing response on his blog: "Whatever. Feel free to be offended. I find such humorless, knee-jerk reactions, to be tedious at best, sanctimonious and arrogant at worst .... Feel free to claim that I'm somehow abandoning "progressive principles" by running the ad. It's a free country. Feel free to storm off in a huff. Other deserving bloggers could use the patronage."

And storm off some of his readers did--establishing a new blog dedicated to discussing feminist issues on DailyKos, entitled "Women Kossacks." Dozens of other bloggers commented on the controversy at Kos, citing the ad, and causing discussion of TBS in the blogosphere to spike. According to Intelliseek's Blogpulse, posts regarding TBS roughly doubled from June 4 to June 5, while the debate was raging.

Turner said that the company had no idea what sort of controversy the ad would cause. "We knew it would draw a reaction, but you never know how people will respond to a creative," he said.

What's been the effect of that conversation on TBS.com's traffic? Streams of the ad have roughly doubled, Turner said, although exact numbers could not be provided by press time. And according to Turner, ultimately the controversy is good for the ad. "Ultimately, if it helps people become aware of the program, then yes--it's a good thing," he said.

Likewise, Zuniga said that the complaints from offended parties only added publicity to the ad. "The more people have [complained] about the ad, the more successful it has become. It is now the most successful ad in the history of this site, with close to 8,000 click-throughs over the low-traffic weekend," he wrote. "And, now that you have demanded I respond to the ad, thousands more will click through to see what the big deal is all about."