An Australian tourism campaign aimed at gay travelers has yanked a phallocentric marketing image after local mainstream media outlets became, er, engorged over the pic, reports The Australian.
Touting Australia’s Gold Coast, the advert featured a tanned male in a skintight swimsuit that clearly spotlighted his endowment, with an accompanying tagline encouraging visitors to “check out our impressive packages…”
Though the spot was just one of several images used by Gold Coast Tourism on its microsite Gay Gold Coast, local media outlets like the Gold Coast Bulletin and the Australian Broadcasting Company honed in on the racy bulge, leading tourism bosses to pull it.
“The image was used as a lead image in news stories about our campaign, which we think is an incorrect interpretation of our marketing strategy,” Gold Coast Tourism’s Ben Pole told the Australian media site Mumbrella. “We didn’t want that image reducing our marketing strategy to a crotch shot. So we have removed it from our site.”
The Gold Coast, a sunny and sprawling coastal city in Queensland, has reached out to international gay tourists in recent years. Long a favorite with LGBT Australians, it’s the country’s sixth largest city and the only one with GayComfort Accreditation by the UK-based Out Now Consulting.
