p2pnet news | Advertising:- Trying to be cool and groovy, Australia’s Virgin Mobile phone company used a pic of 16-year-old Alison Chang flashing a peace sign in an “Are You With Us Or What?” advertisements.

Virgin Mobile had “Dump your pen friend” over Alison’s picture and “Free text virgin to virgin” at the bottom, said the Sydney Morning Herald.

But not only did the ad cause Alison “grief and humiliation by plastering her photo on billboards and website advertisements without consent,” Virgin had ripped the picture off from a Flickr post, also without consent, says the story.

“It’s the tagline, it’s derogatory,” the Daily Telegraph has brother, Damon Chang, 27, stating.

“A lot of her church friends saw it.”

The shot was taken by a youth counsellor who posted it on his Flickr page, says the story, adding:

“On another Flickr page, the user who uploaded the original photo and a user who claims to be the teenage girl in it can be seen discussing the advertisement.”

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Sydney Morning Herald - Virgin sued for using teen’s photo, September 21, 2007
Daily Telegraph - Flickr user sues Virgin Mobile over ‘derogatory’ ad, September 22, 2007

---

Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php

---

Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 9:34 am and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

HOME

Viewed 5038 times