BigPond customers into XXX, leather?

Send to a friend Print

Help more people find out about this story
Del.icio.us StumbleUpon

Dan Warne11 February 2008, 8:22 AM

Telstra BigPond has withdrawn an advertising campaign that inadvertently suggested its customers were into XXX, leather, and trawling Sydney's Kings Cross red light district.

Telstra BigPond has withdrawn an advertising campaign that inadvertently suggested its customers were into XXX, leather, and trawling Sydney's Kings Cross red light district.

The advertising campaign was running on websites as recently as Thursday and posed the question, "who has access to your account details"? Directly beneath the question, a list of account details was shown, listing transactions such as "Love shop XXX", "The Leather Shop" and "The Cross ATM".

The ad then showed a picture of a drugged-out looking hacker and then flipped to a screen promoting a free 60-day trial of BigPond's security software.

We asked BigPond whether there was some unfortunate miscommunication in the ad, or whether BigPond customers are actually into leather, trawling the Cross and ordering from Love Shop XXX (and therefore worried about pimply hackers finding out about their devious habits.)

Spokesman Craig Middleton said the ad had been withdrawn and was intended to be a "cheeky" ad.

He noted that it was clearly successful because it had the highest number of clicks of any ad in the whole ad campaign.