Spirit Airlines on Tuesday stretched its edgy advertising campaigns for discount airline tickets with: "The Weiner Sale: With Fares Too HARD to Resist."
Instead of a photo of U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, the New York Democrat who on Monday admitted to sending salacious photos to women over his Twitter account, Spirit's ad shows a hot dog in a bun.
But there's no mistaking the focus of the attention-grabbing subject line of emails from Spirit's promotions department: "Have You Seen Our Weiner?"
Nor the additional copy on the Spirit ad: "This scandalous sale is not secret so get socially connected with fares from just $9 each way, based on roundtrip purchase."
Said Spirit spokeswoman Misty Pinson: "We can confirm with certitude that the photo is in fact our weiner." She didn't elaborate on the campaign strategy, but did acknowledge, "The ad is ours, and we sent it."
The ad was beginning to take off on the blogosphere, with nearly a dozen outlets commenting on its tackiness or cleverness or both.
Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" forum called the Weiner sale a "great promo."
It's not the first time Spirit has entered the political or scandalous realm.
In 2009, Spirit ran an "eye of the tiger!" sale, replete with a video of a tiger driving a car into a fire hydrant outside a large home, shortly after golfer Tiger Woods did the same.
Spirit treated President Barack Obama with more respect earlier that year, turning one of his speeches into "The Obama Numbers Game."
That allowed passengers to take $13 off one-way fares after participating in a contest to score the president's speech with a comparison of positive and negative words.
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