WOW: Scream Your Own Name by The Garden

While Sex toy ads have historically been relegated to classifieds and other lower profile publications, The Garden is bringing them front and centre — alongside one of Canada’s busiest highways. A new billboard for Wow Tech Group’s sex toy brand ‘Womanizer’, with the provocative headline, 'Scream your own name' has been standing tall along one of Toronto’s busiest highways, the QEW at the 427, for a record-breaking three weeks. Longer than any billboard of its kind in North America.

Although no concrete regulations exist that prohibit the public advertising of sex toys, the policies often held by individual media companies tend to err on the side of strategic prudishness. Even in the rare instance a media company does take a chance, often a single complaint will be enough to have it taken down.

But all ads of a sexual nature are not created equal. While women’s sex toys are routinely being denied approval, provocative ads for men’s sexual health continue to appear, seemingly without any controversy. It’s a double standard that Wow Tech, along with their agency partner, The Garden, is challenging.