A new private bus company in Cardiff had a fantastic wink-wink nudge-nudge idea for advertising its all-day fare.
What?
Yes, she’s a young woman; yes, she could be naked behind that sign she’s holding, and her bare shoulders seem to suggest that; yes, the sign says RIDE ME ALL DAY FOR £3; but none of that means she’s suggesting you can ride HER for £3. She’s speaking for the bus! Obviously!
The Mirror reports that there was widespread irritation, and that the bus company deleted its tweets and said jeezis it was just a joke.
New Adventure Travel said this morning “there is no-one available here to comment on this today,” before telling the Mirror Online to call back tomorrow.
But within three hours of launching their new service, the company said in a statement: “In view of the reaction to our bus advertising today we wish to set out our position: Firstly we have stated that our objectives have been to make catching the bus attractive to the younger generation.
“We therefore developed an internal advertising campaign featuring males and females to hold boards to promote the cost of our daily tickets.
“The slogan of ‘ride me all day for £3’, whilst being a little tongue in cheek, was in no way intended to cause offence to either men or women and, if the advert has done so then we apologise unreservedly. There has certainly been no intention to objectify either men or women. Given the volume of negativity received we have decided to remove the pictures from the back of the buses within the next twenty four hours.”
Well quite. How could there be anything at all contemptuous of women in that ad? I just can’t see it, no matter how hard I squint, can you?
Thanks for the notpology.
Why is my bullshit detector going off?
They did have men too, if people are questioning that:
http://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/images/news/gallery/topless-men-and-women-holding-ride-me-all-day-for-3-signs-appear-on-busses-in-the-uk_1.jpg
Whenever I see something like this, I watch Bill Hick’s rant about marketing people.
Who could possible see this as sexist?
I think I pulled a muscle, rolling my eyes like that.
Who could possible see this as sexist?
Or funny
That’s what I hate about the “haw haw we wurr jus kiddin” defense. It assumes the defendant has a shitty sense of humor to boot.
Women – the buses of people.
Thank you, Anne Marie #2.
The larger pictures at the Sun article make it clear that both the male and female models are, in fact, not naked, but wearing pants. Not that this changes much of anything. The larger implications are still there.
Does anyone have any thoughts about why these images are in grayscale? The look of these ads remind me of the ones that just got pulled on the tube:
http://cdn3-www.thefashionspot.com/assets/uploads/2015/04/beach-body-ready.jpg
Don’t you just love it when people say “they’ve got pictures of men too, so it’s all equal and fine and what are you making such a fuss about?” (for clarification: I’m not referring to Anne Marie #2 but to all the commenters I’ve seen elsewhere who actually did specifically and explicitly take the the further step of arguing that this makes it all all right). Because a topless man and a topless woman have exactly the same connotations, of course they do! And occupy the exact same position in terms of social power or lack of it, and have exactly the same agency. Because, gosh, when you’re a bloke you just naturally wish women would compliment you in the street too! You’d love it if women called you darlin’ in the shops, and held doors open for you. Because you know women really love these things! They often smile, don’t they? You know that no woman has ever been insulted or followed or assaulted for failing to be suitably grateful for these lovely compliments!
Don’t you just love it when people erase context?
If? If? It’s obvious, you fatuous buffoons, that people did get upset. This puts the onus on being offended on the offendee, not the offender.
Unless that bus is sparkling clean, I really don’t want to associate a bus with sex. If they had shown a sexy destination that would be more appealing. But it sounds like they were so in love with the idea of making a pun, they missed the bigger picture. Also, they should have asked young people what would get them to ride a bus. Because young people are not as stupid as the ad creators.
Small bright side: the backlash started the same morning, and was sufficiently swift, universal and brutal that the company not-pologised and committed to ripping them off every bus within the next 24 hours. The interesting thing about it was that, unlike the “beach ready body” ads recently in the news, seemingly nobody (apart from the authors) stepped up to defend these ads in any way.
Someone should tell them the meaning of the word “unreservedly”.