Another tasteful, classy English marketing campaign

Continuing the theme from yesterday, those tasteful Brits are at it again. Wednesday's Wall Street Journal reports (sub. reqd) on an ad campaign that already got a lot of buzz in the UK. It's for the discount airline EasyJet, which engages in brutal price and non-price competition with Irish competitor Ryanair. The WSJ gives a straightforward explanation:

For the past two weeks, ads in newspapers and in outdoor posters have featured a picture of an oversized, bikini-covered woman's chest. In London, the ads got prominent placement on sidewalk poster-stand sites, so it hasn't been uncommon for people walking down the street to suddenly discover a large bosom in their sightline. The tag line, a cheeky nod to the Iraq war: "Discover weapons of mass distraction."

If you're already laughing, then more (unintended) hilarity is on the way via the airline's "defence" of the ad:

EasyJet says the bosom shot is all in good fun. "It's meant to be tongue-in-cheek," Mr. Nicol says. "It's meant to be sexy rather than sexist."

Note the classic Spinal Tap reference in the second sentence. If you must see the ad, then the best we can do is point you to this useful Guardian site, which collects a lot of ad campaign material. Scroll down a bit to see it, and a few other ones too. Remember, they are sexy, not sexist. Sort of like Roxxoff.