There has been a furore in the media this week over images shot by Helmut Newton for James Boag’s Premium brand.
Newton, who died in a car crash in January, has shot press images for the brewer since 1994. Boag’s chooses the image it likes best and builds a TV campaign around it.
The trouble began when Boag’s sent out a ‘memorial’album of Newton images as part of the media kit to announce the release of its new cinema ad. Among the pictures was one that had anti-alcohol and anti-sexual-abuse activists accusing the brewery of promoting irresponsible images that condone violence against women.
“The message they’re giving is that somehow beer makes women sexually available,”spokeswoman for Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital Centre Against Sexual Assault Marg D’Arcy said.
Director of sales and marketing at J Boag & Son, Lyndon Adams, admitted the company made a mistake sending the images out and is upset at the thought it may have caused people distress.
“It was never our intention to utilise the image in a media placement—we just wanted to show some of the range of Helmut’s work,” he said.
Boag’s agency is Y&R Melbourne. Account director Richard Arbon says Newton was not a photographer who could be strictly art-directed and some of his images will never see the light of day.
