Dame Susan Devoy: Fitzy ad made me cringe

Pathetic is the only appropriate word to describe Telecom's botched "Abstain from the Game" campaign to support the All Blacks.

The headlines on Wednesday nearly made me choke on my Weet-Bix. I understand that for the next few weeks we will be saturated with Rugby World Cup goings-on but, given the Rugby World Cup hasn't even started, I found it incredible that a campaign to support the All Blacks by abstaining from sex leading up to and during the World Cup dominated the news.

I figured as a country we were really showing our maturity but, thankfully, common sense has prevailed and Telecom has pulled the plug on the controversial campaign, only after under enormous public pressure.

I am not such a stick in the mud. I like quirky, edgy, tongue-in-cheek humour, but I am still struggling to comprehend how the entire nation abstaining from sex would have supported the All Blacks.

Can you picture our salubrious leader Richie McCaw proclaiming in his captain's speech that: "We are doing this boys, for all the men and women in New Zealand who have sacrificed their personal desires"?

I think not, and imagine if the unthinkable happened and we lost. The consequences would be catastrophic. Combine the disappointment of losing with the frustration of those who have gone without and the mood would be very black. It was proposed that if you participated in the campaign then you would be able to proudly wear a black rubber finger-ring to demonstrate your support.

Ironically, the only thing this symbolic ring reminds me of is a docking ring generally found on sheep.

The advertising company wanted something risque, and in one sense if their primary goal was to generate public interest then they were undoubtedly successful.

But they were more successful in attracting widespread condemnation both here and abroad.

Even more unbelievable is that Sean Fitzpatrick, a former All Black great who is not short of a penny, would see any merit in this absurd concept.

I know money talks and after the RWC he can quickly retreat back to the UK, where he resides away from public ridicule. But what was he thinking? I watched the advertisement on the internet and it made me cringe.

Fitzpatrick looked like a B-grade Austin Powers driving around in his pink Wiggles car. No doubt Telecom paid him a princely sum and the creative agency Saatchi and Saatchi would have racked up a few hundred thousand as well.

But there are certainly no winners here and all of those who sat around the decision-making table must now question how, with all their so-called expertise, they failed miserably in their market research.

There are those who say we take ourselves too seriously and it was just a bit if fun.

The only fun part has been the clever responses generated. Most of them are genius but sadly too rude to repeat.

The head honchos at the NZRU must be feeling the heat as they limp from one PR disaster to another - first the debacle surrounding adidas and the RWC jersey, Telecom, and now I read that the Webb Ellis trophy that has been touring the country is not really the Webb Ellis trophy.

No big deal in the scheme of things, if only they were up-front at the outset.

The old adage that any publicity is good publicity won't ring true here. If it wasn't such an inconvenience, I would probably look at changing my telco account.

My suggestion to Telecom is that if it wants to earn a few brownie points it could invest its money into finding a way to stop all the male enhancement and Viagra spam emails that I get in my xtra account.

They might be finding out soon that sex doesn't sell.