Most sexist beer commercial ever?

Can we blame Mad Men for this?

I'm talking about Toshiba.ca's new ad campaign. As if their laptops weren't humiliating enough, the Canadian wing of Toshiba has opted to embarrass itself with a trio of wink, wink, nudge, nudge videos. The ads portray the buxom company spokesperson as a kind of exotic dancer using office equipment in lieu of a pole. According to the copy, Lucy is just the sort of "pro" to unstress (or did she say undress?) tech-buying boys.

She recites double entendres as she stretches in her low-cut yoga top, and the camera gets a shot of her ample cleavage. Another frame has Lucy on all fours, butt to the camera, tilting her pelvis up invitingly in what is ostensibly an ad for a copier. But perhaps the most telling shot is of our amateur yogini on her back, with a Toshiba tablet on her groin, thrusting upwards as if engaged in coitus with the fondle-slab.

Say, did that ad really just tell us that if we buy a Toshiba tablet we're going to get screwed?

Apparently, Toshiba commissioned a survey that showed workplace stress due to malfunctioning equipment is common and many office workers like to relax by having office romances(!) Thirty-one per cent of office workers feel flirting reduces stress. Another 14 per cent go for full-blown romances, with tablet users being twice as likely (at 27 per cent) to dip their pens in the company ink. So Toshiba decided to conflate these findings and Lucy was born. Her goal is to "... demonstrate the reliability of Toshiba business technology in a fun and sexy way."

Yes, because it's just so important that office equipment be sexy.

Reading that survey -- do 11 per cent of men really use a broken printer as an excuse to flirt with a colleague? -- all I could think was someone needs to get to these respondents before the sexual harassment suits are filed.