Virgin tells people to get naked for charity, beneficiaries not amused

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So all of Virgin's many, many brands tend to have a somewhat quirky sense of humor, and typically, that seems to sit just fine with the company's young (and youthful) target demo. It's par for the course then with Strip2Clothe, a campaign it recently launched to get folks to do their best Elizabeth-Berkley-in-Showgirls impression on camera. The idea was simple, if not a little bizarre: post up your best striptease, and for every five views, Virgin would donate one article of clothing to a network of organizations dedicated to helping homeless youth around the country. Problem is, those organizations were never consulted before Virgin launched the campaign, and some of them weren't terribly pleased with the concept, calling it "exploitative" and "distasteful" among other things. Despite the outcry, Strip2Clothe is still online, with a Virgin rep saying "this issue is really important to us, we've had over 12,000 hits for the site so far, and we want to continue to raise awareness for this important issue." And yes, we know you're going to Google it the second you're done reading this, so don't even try to hide it.

Link to article: http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/0...eficiaries-not

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I love this comment on the article:

"They already changed it to _____2clothe. As in, do whatever you want. Guess the pressure got to them.

"Oh, and there is a TOTAL of seven videos on that site, haha."

[PeppyGPhiB]

Poor plan by Virgin. Obviously a tactic to make the company look like a good global citizen, too bad it wasn't responsible enough to ask the charities if they were even interested in being associated with Virgin. This is marketing 101, kids.