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Virgin Mobile is asking teens to take off their clothes and strip in front of the camera then submit the videos for public airing.
Oh, but it's all in the name of charity.
They asked kids to post videos of themselves stripping to music. In exchange, clothing companies would provide donations of new clothes based on the number of times the videos were viewed. Called "Strip2Clothe," the campaign carries the tagline, "You take off yours, we donate ours."
There is no full nudity allowed. That hasn't stopped parents from expressing anger over Virgin's request to have their children strip for other kids and some have gone as far as to call the ads "sexually exploitive".
Ironically, the United Kingdom would not permit similar advertisements for Virgin's online gambling brand.
The Advertising Standards Authority, Great Britain's self-regulatory arm of the country's advertising industry, has been closely observing the ads placed by gambling and casino interests. Stripping teens certainly wouldn't make the cut.
The "Authority" won't even allow salacious sex crazed adult dwarfs (a la a Paddy Power ad) nor did a recent ad by William Hill fly. Well, actually it did...but Great Britain's "media police" grounded it.
That advert depicted a woman hurrying her husband off to work by moving the hands of the kitchen clock forward, before running upstairs to play William Hill online bingo and stating " I get mine the minute he's out the door". She later moved the hands of the clock back saying "Doesn't time fly."
Virgin's online gambling brand is a proud sponsor of the Gambling911.com website.
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Payton O'Brien, Gambling911.com Senior Editor POBrien@CostiganMedia.com
Originally published July 16, 2008 10:56 pm EST
