Jul

22

Wicked Campers and Virgin slammed over Ad complaints

Filed Under Public Relations 

When is a mysogynistic slogan not part of your advertising or marketing communications arsenal? When it’s liveried onto company vans, silly! Least that’s the claim of campervan hire company Wicked, which has been censured for featuring spray painted slogans including “Women are like banks – once you withdraw you lose interest” and “If God was a woman, sperm would taste like chocolate”, on the back of its vans. There’a another one that says ‘This van’s a puss…’ well you can guess. Not sure if this was agency-inspired work, or from the client’s fair hand themselves.

And as news.com.au reported last week, “Virgin Blue (Airline) has been left red-faced after being forced to scrap an advertising campaign which urged people to “chuck a sickie” (take a fake day off) and jet off on holidays. Virgin’s PR line quickly focused on emphasising that they withdrew the Ads (online) after 29minutes…but I’m certain I saw this as a billboard execution - there ain’t no way that one got removed at a half hour’s notice. Again, puzzlingly, no Ad agency was mentioned as responsible in any media reports.

 

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