The overarching role of marketing is to create in the customer the imperative to take a desired action, hopefully while doing no evil.
Today, children, we will talk about really evil people.
In my hometown of Tel Aviv, Israel, there’s a restaurant called Agadir which prides itself on its excellent hamburgers. It also prides itself on the attractiveness of its female servers, so much so that for the Jewish new year they issued a calendar featuring wholesome photos of the girls in action.
Here are a few samples:
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The man behind the campaign is actually a woman, one Keren Arnaldes, creative director for the Mu-Ar ad agency. Here are excerpts from an interview with her published in The Marker Online magazine (translated by me from Hebrew):
“You can choose to see them as humiliated and abused, but nothing there was staged…”
“Q: Does this mean that the waitresses chose to be photographed on all fours?… A: Totally… it reflects the kind of reality these girls live in… [these girls] are women, not little girls.”
“There’s nothing grotesque or pornographic about it…”
“Not every girl shown on all fours is submissive. Could be that she just wants to [bend over] that way. It comes from a place of strength. You shouldn’t take it to a sexist place…”
“They all do it out of loyalty to Agadir” (duh…)
Listen. I know sex sells, and I’m no prude, and bla bla bla. I have no problem with erotica or pornography or whatever. But there’s a big difference – from Maxim to Hustler to any amateur porn site, the models and actors are self-aware adult entertainers. This is not the case. Encouraging the servers to pose in compromising positions (the photos will haunt these girls for years to come), and taking advantage of their loyalty to the workplace, crosses a big, fat line.
From the creative director to the restaurant’s owner, you are nothing but self-righteous smut peddlers. And that’s evil.
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