Miley Cyrus and offshore teen sex ads (UPDATED)
Jezebel raises an important issue pertaining to the Miley Cyrus controversy: conflicting sexual norms across the world. In the U.S., a sexualized image of a 15 or 17 year old can give rise to cries of child porn; in China, where the age of consent is 14, a Disney billboard with a sexed-up twelve year old passes without notice until seen by Western eyes.
The photo above illustrates how PR in another country can stand in striking contrast to PR at home. It's a European ad for HP Laserjets that incorporates the overt sexual objectification of young girls common in manga, particularly in the genre known as lolicon.
And here's another example from this series, which made the rounds in design blogs back when they hit Ads of the World.
In the U.S., corporate scandals have led HP to try to boost its tarnished corporate image by celebrating its commitment to civic virtue. The negative attention from an ad like this could be counterproductive, to say the least.
In Europe the reaction so far seems to be mixed, although one blog, Daily Yoghurt, has asked readers to post their own colorized versions.
The controversy resulting from the Disney billboard provides a warning as to the latent potential for negative PR resulting from ads that traditionally went unseen outside their offshore markets. After all, there's ratings and site visits in bringing hidden deviance to light. It's just one more reason why corporations are exerting more centralized control over local PR.
UPDATE: The Laserjet ads have now been removed from Ads of the World. A shame, really, because along with 'em went the info regarding the agency that designed them. According to this Google cache of a blog post mirroring the original AotW pages, here are the details regarding the apparent subcontractor whom, I suspect, HP won't be using any time soon:
Advertising Agency: Publicis, Bucharest, Romania
Creative Director: Razvan Capanescu
Art Director / Copywriter: Catalin Rulea
Published: April 2007
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As a gainfully employed lingerine model for the kids aged 6 to 12 demographic, I find this issue reminiscent of that Suicidal Tendencies song "Institutionalized". Do we need other people / institutions to decide our "best interests"? Especially "Organized Christianity" that harbors the idea of Tomas de Torquemada burning alive 3,000 Jews as a "good thing".