To date, there are more than 100 titles, which, much like the brand name itself, don’t leave much room for ambiguity: “Girls Gone Wild Beach Babes,” “Girls Gone Wild Mardi Gras,” “Girls Gone Wild Girls Who Like Girls,” “Girls Gone Wild Spring Break 2K2,” “Girls Gone Wild Ultimate Spring Break,” “…Forbidden Spring Break” “…Endless Spring Break.” One gets the idea. Of course the girls in the videos haven’t so much “gone wild” as they’ve “gone naked” and probably, more often then not, “gone drunk.”

“REAL GIRLS!” screams the text on one of the video packages, perfectly summing up both the brand’s product and its promise. The “realness” is genuine, spontaneous exhibitionism by good-looking young women. While not bogging down in the psychology of “why,” this confirms that, to consumers, there is a distinct added value to seeing the breasts of a woman who wasn’t paid to bear them as opposed to those of a woman who was.

GGW can attribute the rest of its success to an ingenious bit of brand legitimization. By distancing itself from the porn industry, GGW has defined itself more as mature reality television than erotic content delivery mechanism. Its horny is corny, not porny. One of the ways in which GGW does this is by advertising on mainstream basic cable channels such as Comedy Central and E! Entertainment, choosing timeslots late at night on programs when its target audience is the heaviest, such as during shock-jock Howard Stern’s show and bikini-heavy “Wild On.” The ads radiate a sense of fun libidinousness better associated with the traits of uninhibited youth-never-ends Dionysus-ism than with dirty-old-man peeping-Tom lecherousness.

Its brand positioning could be defined as self-conscious to the extreme. Like the party clown who is so bizarre he’s cool, GGW’s brand seems to say, “Look at how completely ridiculous we are! Can you believe anybody would do this? Can you believe anyone would buy this?” But people do buy it. Many, many people.

Creator of GGW Joe Francis recently told the New York Times that girls have gone wild for him to the tune of US$ 100 million. The wild success of the brand has gone and made it a household name. Mainstream media spoofs GGW in variety shows, and US Presidential candidate John Kerry even teasingly mentioned a “Kerry Gone Wild” title during a campaign stop.

The best side effect of the brand’s wide exposure and combination of legitimacy and iconography is that it allows for self-perpetuation. The more people talk openly about GGW and how “fun” they think it is, the more iconic it becomes and the easier it is for the brand to recruit “product” for future videos. An armchair psychologist might call this the everybody’s-doing-it-so-it-must-be-okay condition. And what does GGW intend to do with all of this unpredicted brand awareness? Overextend it of course.

Until recently, GGW leveraged its brand awareness to recruit a select number of celebrities such as rapper Snoop Dogg and testosterone-centric comedian Doug Stanhope to host certain videos. But the brand now reports plans for a music collection featuring big-name artists, a big studio film and a New York flagship restaurant. The obvious risk a focused brand like GGW faces in its ambitions is brand overexposure. A party culture mainstay, GGW’s kitsch value could easily dissipate if it becomes just a cultural mainstay. Part of GGW’s allure is that such activities are specific to a certain hedonistic mindset that happens only under precise conditions. The fun GGW sells is not actually created by GGW itself, but chronicled for the rest of us who are too old/boring/inhibited to participate. Like the big bang, it cannot be recreated in a laboratory environment (such as a restaurant).

GGW has grown an ego and seems to be under the misguided notion that it invented the fun that it records. Furthermore, when eager customers start showing up at the GGW restaurant and find it filled with the not-so-taut skin of voyeuristic 50-year-olds in mid-life crises, the brand may estrange the very group that legitimizes its non-porn differentiation. A GGW video teaches the viewer the art of the tease. Apparently, GGW management needs to watch some of its own videos.

But GGW may succeed in the long-term despite its efforts otherwise. Hands-down the best thing to ever happen to the GGW brand was probably the recent story that Brad Pitt gifted his fellow trifecta of English-speaking-nation-film-heartthrobs, Orlando Bloom and Eric Bana, with a selection of GGW videos, which Pitt reportedly loves. Furthermore, Pitt himself was given GGW products by his own wife, perma-tabloid-cover-girl Jennifer Aniston. And, rest assured, if it’s Girls Gone Wild that the couple everyone wants to be wants, then it will be what everyone who wants to be them gets.

Abram D. Sauer lives in New York City.