Essentially, a new $35 million ad campaign by America Online comes down to this: Sharon Stone is not getting laid. Certainly not by the AOL Broadband Running Man Logo, anyway.
We'd better explain. Stone - still remembered best for her leg-flexing interrogation scene in Basic Instinct - appears in a new television spot, depicted in silky sheets, giggling post-orgasmically, saying almost idly, "That was the most amazing experience I've ever had." Then, she turns to an unseen lover, saying, "So, can you stay? Or do you have to run?" Three guesses what the Running Man does.
"The new AOL for Broadband," purrs an announcer at that point, "is just a little sexier than you imagined."
AOL? Sexy? Not so fast, says New York magazine's Metro columnist, Simon Dumenco. "The irony is that in aligning itself with a silver-screen temptress whose moment has come and gone, AOL has only reminded us all how precipitously it, too, has faded," he wrote this week.
"The other irony: While AOL pushes its $55 broadband package, its corporate sibling, Time Warner Cable, sells its popular Road Runner broadband service for just $45. Granted, its cartoon mascot is just as creepy as AOL’s Running Man...but at least that Road Runner bird has a trendy lock on sexual ambiguity."
Just as long as Wile E. Coyote doesn't get any cute ideas about Sharon Stone...
