Virgin Mobile Ad Campaign Ruins Girl’s Life
- September 21st, 2007
- 4 Comments
Becoming a Web celeb is a very easy thing to achieve these days. Just look at the he/she/it cried and cried about Britney after the VMAs. Obviously he/she/it knew it would garner some attention and he/she/it took full advantage. In some instances you can grab a lot unwanted attention because someone else thinks it’s funny and finds a way to exploit you. Alison Chang’s case isn’t quite Web celeb worthy, but she did hit mainstream media and the results were devastating.
You would think your life was over if you were a 16-year old girl whose picture was being plastered all over billboards with phrases like: “Dump your pen friend” or “Free text virgin to virgin”. This is what Virgin Mobile did to Alison and others whose pictures were taken from Flickr and used in an ad campaign in Australia. The family is crying foul:
It’s the tag line; it’s derogatory,” said Damon Chang, 27. “A lot of her church friends saw it.
I want to be in a Virgin Mobile ad campaign.
Hey Virgin,
Check me out in the ‘About’ section, my Flickr link is there.
K, Thx.
Travis
11 months ago
It could have been worse they could have been selling herpes medicine or something worse than phones. Why would a company just steal a photo and use it - they had to know the person would figure it out eventually. Even if they did not break any laws they still should have given this more thought and used photos with people’s permission.
Reply
Liam (Who am I?)
11 months ago
Doubt she will win this case. Her photos were released under CC Attribution License which means they can be used for any purpose if they link back to author… they did just that. Next time they should think about changing the creative commons licensing type… stupid girl.
This is why we have creative commons… to protect the author, they should of read up about creative common licensing before signing up to Flickr.
Liam (Who am I?)
11 months ago
Forgot to add…If she wasn’t the owner of the photo and appeared in it, it was up to the Author who posted the picture on Flickr to have set the suitable CC Attribution or ask the individual person in the photo if it was ok to make the picture public. By the title of the photo http://flickr.com/photos/chewywong/467623403/ the person knew her… I think both the Author and the Girl at fault, not Virgin.
Tereasa (Who am I?)
11 months ago
I don’t think the Girl was at fault here. The Author/Photographer holds the responsibly of obtaining a proper model release if he intends the photo to be used for commercial purposes. Whether or not there are monetary gains. And shame on the Ad Agency for not following up on that matter. A good designer will make sure there will be no issues with stock images.
I think that claiming to be humiliated is a bit of a stretch for the girl and her family - the photo was on the ‘net for anyone to find and see…