Roadside billboards in the heart of a Jewish community are to be removed after objectors claimed they were too provocative.
Barnet Councillor Brian Gordon demanded action from his own officials. He said: “To a lot of people, seeing a great big poster with inappropriate words on it is very provocative.
“Jewish people do not want to see this flaunted about. In shul this morning I was asked what the council was going to do about it.”
Asked to comment to the Jewish Chronicle, a supervisor with the company advertised said he could not because he was at the firm’s headquarters in Australia and said his boss was unavailable: “It’s 5am and he’s in bed.”
Eventually, Titan Outdoor, which owns the billboards, said the ads would be removed by the end of the week following the public reaction. They had been due to stay until the end of the month.
But Dr Michael Spira, the advertised companies medical director, insisted: “We’re not out to offend anyone. The billboards were never intended to be permanent or cause offence.”
(Source: Jewish Chronicle)
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3 Responses
The British are more responsive to calls for decency than New York City and Mayor Bloomberg.
#1 – Are there billboards in Boro Park or Williamsburg for such products (which, BTW, would be perfectly kosher for a married man)? If I was advertising such a product among frum Jews I would look for a more discrete way to advertise (probably through dull-looking letters to rabbanim and urologists in the community). I know that such advertising has run into problems in other cities (albeit ones with small populations of secular Jews in them).
No deepthinker. Advertisements in Europe are far more lax than they are in the US. You will find billboards there that would never pass any decency standards in the US.