Contain Yourself: Has Harvey Nichols gone too far?

It might look disgusting and pretty much unnecessary to launch an advertising campaign with female and male models wetting themselves as a sign of excitement for the upcoming summer sales, but either for bad or good, Harvey Nichols’ controversial posters saying ‘Try to contain your excitement’ invaded social networks and were all over the web this week.

The hashtag of #ContainYourself kept appearing on my Twitter home page yesterday as users and customers expressed their views while describing it as ‘disgusting’, ‘the WORST advertising’, ‘crass’, ‘hideous’ and ‘NOT funny’.

The ad was a shocker to the Knightsbridge’s luxury department store. However, Harvey Nichols disagrees with such a negative reaction from the public as their spokesperson released a statement saying: “We developed the campaign to promote our summer sale and capture the excitement in a light-hearted, humorous way. The images in our advertising were designed to be a visual representation of a well-known phrase…”

It also insists that the phrase they used for their slogan, ‘Try to contain your excitement’, was ‘used in a playful, inoffensive manner’.

Yes, it might be an epic fail and it might give a slight feeling that the collection on sale might look as cheap as the ad. But at the end of the day, whether we like it or not, it got what any campaign really aims for – attention from the public and the media. In terms of marketing, I can’t really say it failed, but in terms of fashion it certainly did. Perhaps, on behalf of curiosity more of us will pop into the store to check out the summer sale. But whatever you do, just ‘contain yourself’.

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• Nick McGivney

  You say that ‘in terms of marketing, I can’t really say it failed’, but I’d see it differently. I had never perceived HN as crass and cheap, whatever their relevance to me. But now I do. Major marketing fail.

• http://twitter.com/barbdesouzagio barb desouza Guillot

  This add is offensive and totally uneccessary, would it make be buy, NO, would it encourage me to shop at HN No! so how does this marketing campaign prove to be a success? The shock element has not worked for me personally it only demonstrates the desperation of todays so called advertising professionals ( I use the term lightly) these talentless morons need to crawl under the stone that they came out from! and stop this gutter advertising! There must be more talent out there worthy of this prestige position someone talented enough and intelligent enough to think of a campaign that would compliment the usual high standard of such a company as HN. What were you thinking HN !

• http://twitter.com/JOPARN JOANNA PARNELL

  Love it – what a fun and daring move from HN. Dont get your knickers in a twist everyone…