Graffiti in front of monuments to promote escort site: marketing campaign causes debate

Advertising graffiti in front of Italian monuments: this is the singular marketing campaign that has been designed to advertise Escort Advisor, a well-known escort review site, which recently compiled rankings of Italy’s best and worst municipalities for escort quality, according to user reviews, and wanted to let passersby know about it with graffiti traced on the ground that reproduce the site’s stamps. This is not vandalism: the graffiti was made with materials that disappear in the rain, along the lines of madonnari’s drawings.

The campaign, titled (with the most classic of barracks double entendres) “Come to the right place,” aims to communicate the best municipalities for... quality of escorts (e.g. Desenzano del Garda, Civitanova Marche, Gallarate, Conegliano, Viareggio, Legnano) and the worst ones (Potenza, Lecco, Benevento, Rovigo, Avellino, Catanzaro). In other words, Escort Advisor wanted to “point out” to all lovers of paid sex the municipalities to choose and those to avoid with environmentally sustainable and washable street graffiti in 20 cities and a truck with digital billboards. “No publisher among those we contacted,” said Mike Morra, CEO and founder of Escort Advisor, “wanted to broadcast our ad, despite the fact that there is nothing scandalous, but only irony about the excellence of the Italian territory, among which we also want to include the best escorts in Italy reviewed on our site.” In front of the monuments and in the historic centers of the cities thus appeared “Thank you for coming” stickers indicating certified quality, while in the cities at the bottom of the ranking the sticker reads “Don’t come here!” indicating that they are municipalities to be avoided, due to unachieved escort quality. In the capitals Milan and Turin, Bologna on the other hand is touring the truck with the spot as well as other graffiti in the main squares to signal the campaign and the slogan: “Come to the right place!”

But how does Escort Advisor work? The site indexes all the ads posted on the main escort sites in Italy and sorts them by municipality, plus user reviews to confirm the information. Since 2014, more than 5 million users per month have written more than 700 thousand reviews. It is the reviews that determine the quality of the escort in a specific area, because they contain both the rating and the municipality where the meeting took place.

Yet, this campaign has caused much discussion. There are those who found it brilliant (it was talked about mostly on social media and in local newspapers), while many were outraged, exposing complaints to newspapers and municipalities. According to the site’s operators, the outcry is driven by bringing to everyone’s attention the presence of escorts in even the smallest municipalities. “Once again,” Morra further comments, noting how the outrage is misdirected, “the widespread hypocrisy in Italy on the subject of paid sex has been highlighted. We are more outraged about eco-friendly graffiti that the rain of these days has already washed away and not about the real situation of all the sex workers who every day live the contradiction of exercising a legal but unregulated profession still marked by social stigmas. This latest campaign of ours has highlighted this even more by drawing attention to the negative reviews we receive every day. In an industry without regulation, scams and exploitative situations are the order of the day, and the only way for escort clients to protect themselves is through reviews. Moreover, this mechanism is the only one that enhances the work of professionals who practice with passion and willingness, since their seriousness and authenticity is confirmed by their own clients.” In short, hypocritical indignation? It is a fact that our monuments are still the subject of close discussion.

Graffiti in front of monuments to promote escort site: marketing campaign causes debate

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