Durex Velveteen was a fin-de-millennium project to create a condom aimed specifically at teenagers. SSL International, the owner of the Durex brand, in order to tap the most impressionable and emotionally unstable demographic, devised a marketing push that stressed the unique vitality and spontaneity of adolescent intercourse. The condom itself was slightly shorter and thinner than the default version, to bring out the work-in-progress nature of budding male genitalia, instil confidence in boys who were fretting about both their penis size and the ability to get — and stay — hard through the application process, but also, as a marketing bonus, to attract the less-endowed mature customers whose need for a smaller-sized prophylactic had been hitherto unsatisfied (at least within the range of Durex products). Velveteen was to be lubricated with nonoxynol-9 to decrease the risk of unwanted pregnancy (which, to quote some perceptive product manager, "was unwanted by several more degrees of magnitude in case of teenagers — especially the pretty ones") and its teat was to contain a translucent blob of 5% benzocaine to prevent premature ejaculation, a de facto malady of pubescent males — thus effectively combining the features of Extra Safe and Performa varieties within an identity package aimed at first-time, but by no means less passionate users.
Velveteen brand, which at the time was considered to be one of the key product divisions at Durex, got its very own original campaign, grounded in witticisms such as:
One day you will be rich, wrinkled and impotent. This day is not today.
and its "female" counterpart:
One night you will find yourself rich, fat and married. But not tonight.
and the slightly ambiguous:
Husbands don't need condoms. Guess why.
and the heartless:
Fathers don't use condoms. But they often wish they had.
and the downright vicious:
You could've been born ugly. One doesn't throw away lottery wins.
and the somewhat loquacious:
Love is the name we use to prettify a savage genetic imperative.
(This one had been lifted verbatim from Grant Morrison's 1 2 3 4 and there was some controversy regarding its verbosity, which was thought to pose an insurmountable lexical challenge to a statistical sex-crazed teenager; but then, as somebody in the conference room perceptively quipped: "It's from a comic book, for fuck's sake, it can't be that difficult.") And finally:
You wouldn't want to name your daughter Oubliette, would you?
(This particular nugget of rhetorical wisdom had an asterisk pointing to a fine-print mistranslation of the French word as "a death trap.") The catchphrases were juxtaposed with anonymous evil beauty of barely legal models, hollow eyes glittering with contempt, constellations of disdain etched deep into perfect faces, impeccable skin lit by interlocking halos of very adult hate and very teenage lust. Those faultless genetic specimens were clearly way too attractive to fuck themselves into a bloody oubliette. No fucking way. No sir. Not in such a successful incarnation.
Focus testing went like a hot knife through butter. TDR designed a custom typeface — and did such a brilliant job, Mr Barley himself would be too stunned to spit out his trademark Watch-the-fuck-out-Japan! snarl. Velveteen was destined to be a hit. One executive wittily deemed it: "a fucking paradigm-shift" (get it?) — to which another added: "Ladies and gentlemen, when faced with a product so well-conceived and well-fitting — both puns definitely intended... [rehearsed pause followed by some awkward applause] I want to fuck, just to fuck." One could hardly wish for a better endorsement. Still — truth be told — there was a spark of opposition already within the company. Some less progressive female employees perceived the campaign as "dehumanising" and felt "objectified". The marketing brainpower behind Velveteen reluctantly conceded that the tone was somewhat more aggressive than usual, but expected it to mellow down once the brand has managed to acquire, and consequently defend, a foothold in an increasingly competitive market. Besides, this was all just marketing-speak. Everybody had their innate sense of values anyway. Morality in humans is hardwired. These are just surface phenomena, a flickering dance of shadows against the cave wall. See, we are just performing a little puppet-play. People can tell between their right and wrong candy. People can see through fanciful wrappers into the essence of things and if they can't — well, so much the better for us: the exploiters, the godheads, the clevermongers. This confectionery spiel did not convince everyone, but then nobody in their right mind really believed any company needed to be that rigorously ethical — especially at the expense of its profit margins.
The project came to an abrupt end on the New Year's Eve '03, when the 19-year-old daughter of the VP of Marketing botched slashing her wrists but — powered by the momentum of hysteria — gathered enough courage to dive from the balcony of her bachelorette pad in Greater London, having three weeks earlier gone through a routine abortion which had left her barren. She wrote on the wall of her bedroom (in blood, no less):
"I don't have a soul. But something still hurts."
She was very pretty (prior to the impact, that is). As a matter of fact, she was one of the models used for the Velveteen campaign (when her body was still unsmashed, that is). She had had her abdomen and thighs swathed in baby oil so that they gleamed (when her skin was still nice and warm and smooth, that is). She had been the bull's eye of the target demographic (when she could still breathe and smile and spread her legs, that is). Ironically enough, the aborted foetus had miraculously managed to come into its transitory existence as a consequence of a proper Durex-protected intercourse. Little is known about the internal turmoil that followed, but Velveteen was promptly scrapped. Stocks dipped. Heads rolled. Daily Mail got the whiff and, in one of its holier-than-thou nuclear flashes of wrath, evaporated the twitching corpse. All's well that ends in bodily fluids.
And that is how you never came to wear the silky smooth, tight, teenybop contraceptive sheath we clearly aren't ready for.
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