SEXPO!
It’s the annual congregation of our country’s most horned up individuals, and year after year, it ruffles feathers.
Whether it’s awkward radio spots you have to sit through in the car with your Dad, huge billboards in city centres or adverts on the back of buses, Sexpo’s advertising is, well, aggressive.
The adult consumer expo is coming to Brisbane in August, and one QLD mother has taken issue with ads promoting strippers, nudity and online sex shows on buses and billboards outside her son’s school.
Outraged mum Angela Burrows has created a Change.org petition, ‘PREMIER: stop ‘sex’ advertising on my kid’s school bus’, calling on QLD Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to put a stop to Sexpo’s sexy ads.
“Strippers, sex hotlines, nudity — explicit images are being splashed across our kids’ school buses,” Ms Burrows writes. “Right now, buses are picking up school kids with these inappropriate ads for the upcoming adult sex event, Sexpo!”
Burrows goes on to explain that, as a mother of three who regularly uses public transport, she’s appalled to hear Sexpo 2017 is set to be advertised on public buses ’round the country.
“I’m in touch with a bunch of other concerned mums who’ve seen similar ads on billboards right outside school gates. We have kids in primary school for goodness sake — we don’t want ads and links to watch “live sex” forced on them!!”
At time of writing, the petition has garnered over 2,454 signatures. One signatory even went as far as to say“This add is not appropriate to any human to see.”
But in a salty twist, a spokesperson from Sexpo has explained that the bus ad campaign for the ’17 fest hasn’t actually begun. Burrows has used imagery from the show’s 2014 and 2015 iterations, and Sexpo reckons the “creative, copy, look and feel is significantly different” for this year’s ads.
But it’s not the first time Sexpo’s ads have come under fire. Since it’s debut back in 1996, Sexpo has been on the receiving end of countless complaints by consumers. But, in those 21 years, the company hasn’t had a single complaint upheld against it.
According to the Advertising Standards Board, when it comes to advertising for adult venues or products, “it is reasonable for the advertiser to use images of scantily clad women, as long as there are no exposed nipples or genitals, and poses are not strongly sexualised”.
If history is anything to go by, it looks like these “saucy” ads will remain a fixture on buses across the country.
And if this has piqued your interest and you’re now wondering wtf even goes on at Sexpo… watch this:
Source: News.com.au.
Photo: Facebook.
