(Picture: Stone & Strand)

This week in ‘hey, guys, you may want to rethink the way you’re selling your products’, a jewellery brand has put a delightful advert up on their website.

The ad shows a picture of a woman wearing a bunch of earrings in her multiple piercings.

You can get a sexy Tiger King-inspired costume this Halloween

The tagline: ‘Something for every hole’.

Which is, well, perhaps not as neutral and innocent as marketing for earrings typically should be.


We would not, to illustrate our point, walk in to a jewellery shop and say ‘please fill all my holes’ or ‘hello, I have multiple holes and I’d like something to fill them’.



It just sounds a bit dodgy, doesn’t it?

Sure, that’s a good slogan for a jewelry brand pic.twitter.com/8lnAWHkUF8 — Margaret Lyons (@margeincharge) May 3, 2017

The ad was first picked up by Margaret Lyons, whose tweet has racked up more than 15,000 retweets and a bunch of general cries of ‘OH MY GOD, WHAT IS THIS’.

It’s a magical moment in marketing, and we are greatly enjoying it.

Uh. Maze. Ing. — nick childs (@NickChilds) May 5, 2017

Vaguely curious if they do live up to this promise — Emily Pixels (@PixlEmly) May 3, 2017

Can't stop laughing at this at work — Mythos (@mythosopher) May 3, 2017

There was a little drama involved in the hilarity, however.

You see, the ad was promoting Maria Tash’s earrings and, erm, she wasn’t a fan of her products being sold to fill holes.

This is from a 3rd party without our approval. We've asked to change it, we prefer to think we have something for every piercing! ? Thanks. https://t.co/FHvqE9IGxH — Maria Tash (@MariaTash) May 3, 2017

Stone & Strand rushed to tell everyone that the wording was theirs, not Maria Tash’s, and that they are a ‘team of women proud to be designing jewelery for other women!’

Right then.

Hi there, we wanted to clarify that this was our slogan not @mariatash. We're a team of women proud to be designing jewelry for other women! — STONE AND STRAND (@StoneandStrand) May 3, 2017

Stone & Strand have also now made a tweak to the advert.

They haven’t changed the ‘hole’ wording, and for that we are eternally grateful, but instead of promoting Maria Tash’s products, the imagery simply adds that the hole-fillers are ‘for the girl with multiple piercings.’

(Picture: Stone & Strand)

The clarity is helpful, tbh.

Now, this change does prove that Stone & Strand are aware (now, at least) that their tagline has a double-meaning, which makes it slightly less entertaining than the Dorothy Perkins double penetration debacle.

But still. We will continue to happily gaze at a jewellery campaign offering ‘something for every hole’ and gently sniggering.

We need this. We all need this.

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