From the Fringe | 12.09.2008
German Butcher's Ad Meats Its Match
Germany's national advertising council has admonished a butcher for putting on its adverts and delivery trucks pictures of a naked woman with the slogan "Meat Products, Fresh Service" stamped across her body.
Some would call it delicious, others, mildly palatable, but the council said Thursday, Sept. 11, that the adverts by G&M Fleischwaren Frischdienst were utterly unsavory, degrading and anti-woman.
Designed to unclothe the mouth-watering meat-eater in all of us, the council held that the advert labelled women in an unappetizing manner, a violation of council codes which strive to battle tasteless acts of discrimination.
"Such an advert blatantly violates the council's codes on discrimination and degradation in advertising," the council said in a statement. "Equating a woman with fresh meat is degrading and highly misogynist."
The firm near Stuttgart has agreed to remove the mawkish slogan, but is keeping the woman, whose back and shoulders are visible, in what appears to be an attempt at nonetheless arousing the hunger of the local male population for the mouth-watering products on offer.
A G&M spokeswoman defended the attempt at a stimulating advertisement, saying the company did not see it as inappropriate to use sex to sell meat after the controversial, unstomachable stamp was removed.
Whether G&M's meat sales rise or drop as a result of the advertisement has yet to be seen, as does whether the slogan "sex sells" can be newly skewered to the butchery industry.
