Advertising standards today help to ensure that marketing materials remain tasteful. They aim to prevent sexism, racism and any other type of offensive or irresponsible material. Still, there are some advertisements in the casino world that manage to get away with sexism. Here are a few choice examples.
888 Poker
A few years ago, this is the type of ad that you would see for just about any online casino or poker site. Demonstrating a lack of imagination, many marketers chose to sell online gambling services by featuring women wearing very little clothing.
There are two possible negative connotations here:
1. Gambling will make you more attractive to women
2. Women are prizes, just like poker chips
No matter how you view the advertisement, the message is problematic. Half-naked women have nothing to do with poker, and gambling operators should not make this association.
SportingBet
This is a very recent case, and this advertisement has just been banned. If you’ve watched the advertisement, you already know what’s wrong with it – but we’ll break it down for you anyways.
Firstly, the woman is involved in a sexual relationship with a greyhound. Regardless of your sense of humour, bestiality is never really funny. It’s just gross. While the whole concept of ‘Fifty Shades of Greyhound’ is a clever pun, this ad should have never been more than a bad idea in a marketing meeting.
The other issue is that it uses sex to sell gambling services. Forget, for a moment, that the ad features a dog. Even if it focused on the sexual relationship between a man and a woman, it would still be associating gambling with sexual attraction. While it is certainly true that ‘sex sells’, it is always tasteless when done in such an overt manner.
Belgrade Grand Casino
It’s a pair of disembodied breasts. If this isn’t objectification of women, I don’t know what is. This advertisement exploits women to sell gambling to men. Like the 888 Poker ad, this one depicts women as prizes. In this case, it is not even the entire women – it’s just her breasts.
While someone viewing the advertisement may get a kick out of the image and a giggle out of the pun, there are better, cleverer ways to sell gambling – which don’t objectify women.
Bet At Home
This is another gambling ad that literally objectifies a woman by depicting her as singular body parts instead of a whole person.
In addition, it equates luck in gambling with sexual encounters. It depicts women as nothing more than prizes, and also tells players that if they are successful gamblers that they are entitled to
