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Fancy Takes The Lion's Den NSFW for Valentine's Day
"Rub-A-Dub" is a NSFW retail film campaign created by New York agency Fancy for adult lifestyle retailer The Lion's Den, published in the United States in February 2019 and timed to Valentine's Day, using layered double entendre to reposition adult shopping as an entirely ordinary consumer behaviour.
The Lion's Den carries a retail history stretching back to 1971. Founded by Michael Moran in Columbus, Ohio, the chain expanded from print-oriented adult retail into movies, novelties, and a broader range of sexual-wellness products, according to Ads of the World. Over decades, Moran and his team absorbed direct feedback from female customers and deliberately softened the brand's logo, colour palette, and advertising presentation, pivoting the business away from a predominantly single-male audience toward single women and couples, as documented by Ads of the World and Campaign Live.
"Rub-A-Dub" arrives as a direct expression of that repositioning. In the United States, where broadcast network restrictions limit explicit content, Fancy produced two distinct versions of the spot: a clean cut cleared for broadcast and an uncensored cut for unregulated channels, as confirmed by adsoftheworld.com. The campaign sits within The Lion's Den's broader brand platform and extends a creative philosophy focused on making the brand feel accessible rather than transgressive. The Clapboard archive holds one media asset for this campaign, placing its production footprint squarely in the single-film format typical of Valentine's Day retail pushes. Fancy announced the work on February 12, 2019, with Adweek publishing coverage on February 14, 2019, aligning the campaign's public moment precisely with the holiday.
The Lion's Den occupies a contested position in the United States adult retail market. The brand's strategic goal, as articulated by Fancy co-founder Katie Keating in Adweek on February 14, 2019, was to make "a trip to Lion's Den as normal as a trip to Walmart." That framing defines the campaign's entire strategic logic: destigmatisation, not titillation, is the objective.
North America represented the largest regional segment of the global adult-products market in 2019, according to GlobeNewsWire. Market sizing in this category varies considerably depending on category scope; GlobeNewsWire placed the global adult sex-toy market at approximately US$1.66 billion in 2019, while alternative estimates incorporating broader product lines including lubricants, lingerie, and accessories reached substantially higher figures. What the data consistently confirms is that the United States sits at the centre of regional demand, making the timing and geographic focus of "Rub-A-Dub" commercially rational.
Competitors such as Adam and Eve and Spencer's Gifts have historically relied on either catalogue-style directness or novelty humour to reach similar audiences. The Lion's Den, through Fancy, chose a third path: mainstream creative craft applied to an adult retail brief, designed to earn placement in channels and conversations those competitors typically cannot access. The brand's documented evolution away from male-skewing creative toward content that resonates with couples and women directly informs this strategy, and the dual-version production approach, one broadcast-safe and one uncensored, reflects a practical understanding of how to maximise reach across the fragmented United States media landscape without compromising the creative idea.
"Rub-A-Dub" earns its NSFW designation without showing anything explicitly adult. The film's creative mechanism is sustained double entendre, constructed so that every line and visual reads innocently on its surface while pointing unmistakably elsewhere, a technique that Fancy co-founder and co-chief creative officer Erica Fite described in Campaign Live as an opportunity to "really play with the viewer's imagination" when broadcast restrictions prevent explicit content.
Director Ben Weinstein and director of photography Andy Lilien shaped the film's visual grammar, according to Ads of the World and Clapboard's own archive credits. Producer Dani Dufresne of The Auxiliary Group oversaw physical production. The creative leadership at Fancy rested with co-founders and co-chief creative officers Erica Fite and Katie Keating, whose complementary perspectives on the broadcast challenge produced what Adweek described in February 2019 as a "quirky" and "mildly NSFW" execution. Keating noted in Adweek that the agency navigated a specific client sensitivity: the concern that depicting a woman directing a man in explicit terms could read as problematic, which pushed the team further into implication and away from statement.
That constraint becomes creative fuel. The clean broadcast version and the uncensored version, documented by adsoftheworld.com, demonstrate that the core idea is structurally robust enough to function at two levels of explicitness without collapsing into either confusion or crudeness. The film format, selected for a Valentine's Day retail campaign in the United States, gives Fancy room to build tone, pacing, and comedic timing in ways a static or print execution could not deliver. The result is a piece of retail advertising that competes on craft terms with mainstream brand work rather than seeking shelter in the lower creative expectations traditionally applied to the adult category.
No verified performance data for the "Rub-A-Dub" campaign is publicly available. No sales uplift figures, media reach numbers, or brand-tracking results have been published by The Lion's Den, Fancy, or any third-party source consulted for this analysis. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 56 out of 100, a rating that reflects moderate creative recognition relative to the broader archive.
Structural analysis points to several effectiveness levers that the campaign activates. The Valentine's Day timing in the United States concentrates relevance at peak purchase intent for the adult-gifts category, compressing the window between exposure and conversion. The dual-version production strategy, documented by adsoftheworld.com, maximises reach by enabling broadcast placement alongside unregulated digital distribution, a practical multiplier that single-version campaigns in this category cannot achieve.
The destigmatisation strategy, as framed by Katie Keating in Adweek, operates on a longer brand-equity horizon than a promotional spot. Campaigns that reframe category perception require repeated exposure and cultural reinforcement rather than a single flight, which means "Rub-A-Dub" functions most effectively as an early investment in repositioning rather than a standalone sales driver. The craft quality documented by Campaign Live and Adweek suggests the work was built to earn media attention and industry conversation, which extends earned reach beyond paid placements. Whether that structural ambition translated into measurable commercial return remains unconfirmed by any public source.
"Rub-A-Dub" is a NSFW Valentine's Day film created by Fancy for adult retailer The Lion's Den in the United States in February 2019. The campaign uses sustained double entendre to normalise adult retail shopping. Two versions were produced: one clean cut for broadcast and one uncensored cut for unregulated digital channels, as documented by adsoftheworld.com.
Ben Weinstein directed the Rub-A-Dub film for The Lion's Den. Andy Lilien served as director of photography and Dani Dufresne of The Auxiliary Group produced the spot, according to credits documented by Ads of the World and the Clapboard archive. Creative leadership came from Fancy co-founders Erica Fite and Katie Keating.
Fancy produced a clean broadcast version and an uncensored version because United States broadcast network restrictions prohibit explicit adult content. Erica Fite explained in Campaign Live that working within broadcast limitations created an opportunity to engage the viewer's imagination rather than rely on overt imagery, strengthening the double-entendre creative device at the campaign's core.
The Lion's Den aimed to make adult retail feel as unremarkable as a mainstream grocery trip. Katie Keating told Adweek in February 2019 that the goal was to make visiting The Lion's Den "as normal as a trip to Walmart." This reflects the brand's documented pivot from a male-skewing audience toward couples and single women, per Ads of the World.
The Clapboard Score for the Rub-A-Dub campaign is 56 out of 100. This score reflects moderate creative recognition within the Clapboard archive relative to comparable retail campaigns. No verified external performance data, including sales figures or media reach metrics, has been publicly disclosed by The Lion's Den or agency Fancy for this campaign.
The Lion's Den uses mainstream creative craft to separate itself from competitors such as Adam and Eve and Spencer's Gifts, which rely on directness or novelty humour. By pursuing destigmatisation through broadcast-quality filmmaking, The Lion's Den and Fancy pursued earned media and cultural relevance that direct-response adult retail advertising in the United States rarely achieves.
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