Another rather ill-thought-out advertisement is placing yet another company under fire from angry customers.
This time, it is the turn of the sunglasses brand Oakley, which last week took to Instagram to post new advertisements. While these advertisements were not explicitly “woke,” they were bizarre enough to disgust many viewers.
The ads featured pictures of a naked man wearing Oakley sunglasses. One picture showed him riding a bicycle, another showed him sitting on a rock.
According to the New York Post, the man is Amaury Pierron, a French bicycling champion. While his genitalia are not visible, the ads otherwise leave little to the imagination.
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View this post on Instagram
Honestly, I just do not understand the point of this advertisement. I fail to see how showing a naked man wearing sunglasses tells customers anything about the special qualities of the product.
Many viewers also felt the same way and raked Oakley over the coals. One person commented, “What is wrong with these marketing people!!! Looks like I need new helmet and sunglasses now!!!”
Another Instagram user wrote simply, “Oakley should Fire whoever came up with this.”
Another wrote: “Time to switch to ray-ban.”
Perhaps the most damning comment, however, came from an Instagram user who compared Oakley with Bud Light, another company that has recently faced backlash for its bizarre advertising, saying, “Oakley whats to jump on the same boat as bud light, Gillette and other brands, looks like.”
In all fairness, this advertisement is not as bad as Bud Light’s advertisement that featured Dylan Mulvaney, the transgender influencer who has become a face of symbol of woke marketing disasters. Bud Light’s use of Mulvaney to sell beer was a really in-your-face and obnoxious endorsement of an immoral lifestyle.
Oakley’s advertisement, on the other hand, is just weird.
Nonetheless, it is concerning. Frankly, advertisers should not be using any naked person, male or female, to try to sell products. It is just immoral and it objectifies the individual.
In this case, however, it is extremely troubling because Oakley has a mostly male audience, according to Newsweek, which means that it is trying to appeal to men by showing them a picture of a naked man.
So while it may not be explicitly woke, it may convey an implicit promotion of homosexuality.
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This is nothing new with advertisers. Look at the clothing brand Balenciaga, which took a massive backlash from customers after advertising that appeared to sexualize children.
Oakley should know better than to run these types of advertisements. Whatever it might accomplish in selling product is likely to be dwarfed by its potential to alienate potential customers and cause them to turn away from the company.
You would think that after what happened with Bud Light, advertisers would stop trying to pull these types of stunts. Unfortunately, that turns out not to be the case.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.