Sex shop landlords put porn-industry profits before women and kids
Recently, a Joondalup City (Perth, WA) resident emailed Lendlease CEO, Dale Connor, to ask him to stop Honey Birdette's oversized porn and BDSM themed ads from being displayed in her local Lendlease shopping centre.
From the email:
I [have] serious concerns about Playboy-owned sex store Honey Birdette's larger-than-life porn style ads + BDSM promotions hosted in shop windows at Lakeside Joondalup. A week ago I - along with many other concerned local residents - commented on Lakeside's social media posts to say we objected to these harmful degrading representations of women being shown in our local shopping centre, to us and to our children. Some ads are explicit, featuring women's bare, exposed genitals; others are degrading, bondage-themed depictions of women on dog leashes.
The displays amount to corporate grooming and sexual harassment.
Lendlease CEO Dale Connor
After several failed attempts to transmit the correspondence, the community member suggested to a Lendlease representative that the company's firewall might have been blocking the email due to the language it contained, and emailed the correspondence in an attachment. The representative who eventually received the attachment agreed with the suggestion that due to its contents, the original email had been blocked.
We hope the irony was not lost on Lendlease: the email was only describing the ads which were being shown to children during school holiday activities in their own shopping centre.
Clearly, Lendlease cares about protecting its (adult) corporate staff from harmful, porn-themed content. Why doesn't it demonstrate the same care for its shopping centre customers - a group which includes children?
Children's school holiday activities at a Lendlease mall were held just metres from Honey Birdette's 'bare genitals' ad + bondage promos
Ad Standards a broken system
In her correspondence, the community member highlighted the failures of the advertising system and urged Lendlease to not hide behind it:
By the time Ad Standards reviews the ads currently on display, and makes
its rulings about whether they breach ad industry Code of Ethics, Honey Birdette will have simply replaced them with new, porn style ads which also breach the Code.Lakeside Joondalup cannot hide behind the broken ad standards system while Honey Birdette continues its harmful activities in our community.
'Guided by Ad Standards'
How did Lendlease respond? By hiding behind Ad Standards - again!
A Lendlease representative replied to the community member to say that regarding Honey Birdette’s shop window advertising, the company is 'guided by the advertising regulator, Ad Standards’.
Instead of addressing important points raised by the community member, the Lendlease representative completely ignored them.
In hiding behind the impotent, self-regulated advertsing system that we ALL know doesn't work, Lendlease shows itself to be ignorant, incompetent and/or disingenuous.
Lendlease values, source: lendlease.com
Lendlease puts customers at risk of abuse
In a gross display of negligence, the Lendlease representative also advised the community member that her correspondence would be passed on to the Playboy-owned sex shop:
We will continue to make every effort to provide Honey Birdette with direct feedback in the event of any complaints and will pass your correspondence to their senior management.
This is deeply disturbing and shows just how out of touch Lendlease is with its customers and with the actions of its resident sex shop company. Honey Birdette has repeatedly demonstrated contempt for community members who object to its porn-themed shop window ads, shaming, ridiculing and belittling them in statements published by Ad Standards and in the media.
Lendlease should be working to protect community members from the Playboy-owned sex store. Instead, Lendlease is turning community members into potential targets of abuse.
Lendlease ignores other community members
Many supporters told us they contacted Lendlease to express their concern over Honey Birdette's school holiday-time ads, and to ask the shopping centre to remove them. As far as we know, Lendlease did not give a single response.
By offering a pathetic, non-response to one community member, ignoring others and continuing to host Honey Birdette's porn-style ads in its malls, Lendlease demonstrates its favour for porn-industry profits over the safety and wellbeing of women and children.
See also
Ad Industry self-regulation has failed. Here's 28 reasons why
Community members abused for lodging complaints against Honey Birdette
'Choking women is sexy': Honey Birdette ads eroticise violence against women
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