For Eliot Spitzer, Ashley Alexandra Dupre was the nail in his political coffin. For Girls Gone Wild founder and CEO Joe Francis, she is a “lottery ticket.”

Virgin advertisement featuring Eliot Spitzer

It’s not only talk-show hosts who feed off of politicians’ sex scandals.

So, too, do companies eager to ingratiate themselves with young, self-consciously hip audiences. A case in point: the ad launched this week with dizzying speed by Virgin Mobile Canada, one of the latest spinoffs of billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.

Within a day of the resignation of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Virgin Mobile was running a full-page ad in Toronto’s Metro and 24 commuter dailies playing on his notoriety as “Client 9″ in the complaint against alleged prostitution ring, Emperor’s Club V.I.P.

The ad pictures Spitzer with a thought bubble above his head. “I’m tired of being treated like a number,” it reads. “At Virgin Mobile, you’re more than just a number. . .Whether you’re #9 or #900, you’ll get hooked up with somebody who’ll finally treat you just how you want to be treated.”

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his wife Silda
Photo credit: Office of the Governor

His persona was Dudley Do-Right, the squeaky-clean politician who championed ethics reform, and who was unrelenting as New York Attorney General in going after Wall Street executives - and a prostitution ring or two.

But today, that reputation was in tatters and calls for his resignation mounted after New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer made a brief public statement in his Manhattan office, with his wife, Silda, by his side, apologizing for having “acted in a way that violated the obligations to my family and that violates my - or any -sense of right and wrong.”