• by Karl Greenberg , Staff Writer, September 19, 2008

I'd expected the Friday morning OMMA ad-track panel to be packed.  With men.  Why? it's about Gillette's interactive campaign on Sports Illustrated's SI.com, centered on, you guessed it, the Swimsuit Issue, the only issue I care about.  Unless there's a boxing story.  Well it was mostly men, but not packed.  What was I missing? A panel on social media versus porn?

The Gillette/SI.com effort featured models Selita Ebans, Bar rafaeli, Jessica Gomes.  In an understatement, the blurb in the program says "The average Gillette consumer finds these women far more appealing than even the coolest new razor."  Um, yeah.

MediaVeset put in music and video editing tools housed on the sports illustrated swimsuit issue site at SI.com, with Gillette Fusion Power Phenom as sponsor. Users created video mashups they could send to friend or post on blogs and social networking profiles , getting Gillette 650k page views for the site

Doug Brodman, digital manager of MediaVest said Gilette, which has been key partner for SI for several years came to MediaVest with ideas for Fusion with the SI digital. "The date of launch was same date as the Swimsuit Issue release, so the timing was perfect."

The challenge was how to make the mashup compelling.  Jason Temming, associate director of Starcom MediaVest said bringing in a younger male consumer "Presents obvious challenges."   They are hard to reach and aren't moved by advertising.  "We needed to invite them in in a compelling way."

More later.