To raise awareness of the dangers of leaving a dog locked up in a heated car, PETA, an animal welfare organization made a commercial which was heavily criticized to be sexualizing women.
For the entire duration of this commercial, no dog was to be seen. Instead a ‘sexy’ supermodel was used to depict the message they were trying to get across. In the commercial, she was unwillingly locked in a car which created an imagery of kidnap and rape, which trigged Corey Lee Wrenn, the author of the article“PETA Sexualizes women & Uses Rape culture Imagery to Raise Awareness For…What?” to write about unethical marketing methods.
People were upset when women was used as a comparison to dogs, they felt “the real point of this video is to exploit sexualized violence against women to bring attention to PETA”. Although PETA launched this commercial with good intentions, they went too far in the attempt to attract viewers. The main focus of the commercial was lost, which in turn resulted in criticisms.
Some of the responses to this video was:
Dog damn! I have never realized how sexy it was to let a dog closed in a car for a few minutes!!!
This video has backfired in 2 ways. 1, I now regard women as dogs, 2., now I have a heat exhaustion fetish
Although PETA wants to draw attention to spread their message, but did they go too far? What are the ethical boundaries for companies? Will they do anything in their power to gain attention? Of course you cannot be certain on how the public will react, but companies definitely need to be more aware of the aftereffects of this kind of marketing. Or things can go really bad, like this one.
Sources: http://feminspire.com/peta-sexualizes-women-uses-rape-culture-imagery-to-raise-awareness-for-what/