Everybody knows at least one of them. Silently, they walk among us, unidentified and invisible yet capable of being all-encompassing and smothering when they ply their trade. They are family, they are friends, they are the gal down the street with the lazy eye. They may even be you. Of course I am referring to the chronic forwarder, that odd, internet-obsessed creature who without detailed thought or even a subjectively valid reason feels obligated to forward every internet posted joke, picture, video, inspirational message or weird fact they find to their entire on-line address book. Baby with a leopard print fedora smoking a cigarette? – send it on, “Footprints” story about Jesus on the beach? - click and send, video of an African elephant sneezing and defecating on a tourist? – internet gold.

Sure they seem harmless. Like your buddy who talks incessantly, you effectively tune them out. You might scan their missives, smile or cringe and then delete the lot saying nothing. At least they care enough to forward, you reason. Well don’t look now but the advertising community is hip to their action (and has been for a long while). They know the chronic forwarder cannot help himself so they figured out a way to harness that unfocused energy and turn it into sales.

Bikini Zone has an online ad that has shown up in a ton of email boxes recently. It is the perfect forward: an ad that was done for the Japanese market that has inexplicably hit the net and now zooms around between folks lucky enough to see it. It is an obviously U.S. shot ad using a blond California girl but dubbed over with a Japanese voice for use in a faraway land. The joke is the translation of it and that is what really kills.
Everyone knows that ads shown in other countries are meant for them, not us so it is always fun to see an ad we weren’t supposed to see. In this seemingly bootlegged spot from Bikini Zone a radio is switched on, then a shower, just as a female hand grabs a hangered blue bikini. The voice over (in Japanese) begins while on-screen text translates it literally “The summer is starts so everyone to a beach. All girls must take a bikini and move there.” The pretty blond woman, now dressed in her blue bikini begins admiring herself in the mirror. “I will not listen to excuses!” the voice over continues before it audibly scratches to a stop while the camera pans down to her “bikini zone” showing what can only be described as one hairy mamajamma of a muskrat stuffed inside the triangle of her bikini bottom. It really looks disgusting. Shocked, bikini girl pulls her robe closed.

The voice over continues “Now she will do the useful things.” Bikini girl first wields a razor before painfully ripping some wax sheets off her just-below-camera nether regions. Then it gets cool. Bikini girl holds up a reciprocating saw before plunging it downward in her attempts to “trim the hedge” further. Then, more voice over, “With great courage (bikini girl now uses gardening shears, trimming like mad) and her vigilance will pay off.” By this point bikini girl is now wearing a welder’s mask and is using a blow torch to fight “the forest” as smoke floats up from the work area. Finally, she stands refreshed and the voice over declares success: “She is ready for victorious.” The poor girl then opens her robe only to see her entire upper leg and general bikini area looking like a junkie was using it for target practice with old needles. It looks awful, truly horrible. “No to that!” The she smiles for she sees the answer. “Ahh, Bikini Zone.” Now, bikini girl strides onto the beach and confidently drops her robe as the announcer calls out admiringly “WOW! That is one crotch for looking at!” The tag line closes the piece “Turn your war zone into a bikini zone.”

The ad plays just like it’s been cribbed from Japanese TV for all us sophisticates to watch and laugh at. “Oh those Japanese ads are so crazy, ha ha ha. We would never have an ad like that.” Except it’s not for them. It’s for us – exclusively. The ad is a manufactured piece designed to be traded around from one email box to another. There never was a Japanese ad, just this one masquerading as some great needle in the internet haystack begging to be found. It’s brilliant. I spent three days convinced I had come across something I wasn’t supposed to see. It was only after some digging that the true nature of the spot was revealed.

I have no problem with fake ads, or even ones that are designed to be distributed by the chronic forwarders among us but it is always slightly disappointing to know one cannot trust anything as being what it appears. I know ads have little to do with reality but is truth really so malleable these days as to be functionally non-existent?

I hope not. Though I guess if I want truth I could choose to focus on the point of the product featured in the spot. Bikini Zone is for taming the out-of-control rat’s nest located just below the equator and when you think about it that’s more than enough truth for me.