an open letter to Payday

Hello,

I would like to point out that your campaign to "expose yourself to Payday", with the commercial specifically blurring out a nonexistent genital area on the candy bar, is really remarkably offensive and goes a long way towards normalizing aggressively deviant sexual behavior. This is not cool.

Making a joke out of something that is an actual form of sexual assault is not okay. Anyone who has had the serious misfortune to have been flashed or worse is going to be triggered by your commercial. Sadly, this is a large number of people. A study conducted earlier this year found that two-thirds of women have experienced street harassment, which includes unwanted exposure to strangers' genitals. According to the 2010 census, there are about 157 million women living in the US, so that's 103 million women that you're likely offending, not to mention the PTSD you're triggering for the 1.3 million women who are sexually assaulted each year. And, you may have heard, women make or influence around 85% of household buying decisions.

...Maybe you should consider a new ad strategy. Basing your brand expansion on entertaining the frat-boy contingent while making sexually deviant behavior seem acceptable and funny is, well, probably not the smartest long-term development plan.

Best,
Ann

(submitted via the Payday contact form on Sept. 6, 2014)