Advertisers Abandoning Dating Naked Show

Three companies, Mondelez, retailer Hhgregg and Henkel, have instructed American TV Channel VH1 to stop running their TVCs during the third season of the controversial Dating Naked show. The dropouts have happened after increasing pressure from the Parents Television Council (PTC) about the shows “offensive TV content”.

Dating Naked is a reality TV show where contestants do just that- date naked, people’s genitals and breasts are blurred out. According to the VH1 site: “This season once again features two main daters, David and Natalie, as they search for love on a tropical island paradise. Shot on location in Bora Bora, each week two new men and women will strip down for a shot at igniting a spark with our primary daters.

“At the end of each episode, Natalie and David will each pick the one person they connected with the best to be their keeper and stay on the island. As sexy new daters arrive every week, vying for those coveted “keeper” spots, connections will be tested and relationships will develop. However, in the end, only one can win each of their hearts. Over the course of 12 one-hour episodes the competition gets HOT as sexy new singles arrive on the island each week, vying for David and Natalie’s affections.”

After VH1 ran the first two episodes of the third season, the PTC contacted the three companies to inform them their ads had appeared during the show and urged them not to support the program.

Mondelez said in an email to the PTC: “We have specific guidelines in place to help steward our media spend, which should prevent our ads from appearing in this type of programming. Mondelez International did not purchase this program specifically and has not previously aired ads on the program. In keeping with our policy, we have directed our media partner to ensure that we do not run advertising for any of our brands on this program in the future.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we have also requested a programming schedule for rotation buys to ensure that the specific programs are acceptable to Mondelez International.”

The PTC contacted Henkel over Twitter asking if the company was aware “that on June 29th your media buy sponsored offensive TV content”:

@ThePTC Apologies! This error occurred at the network level. A last minute program change was made and we weren’t switched out. 1/2
— Henkel (@Henkel) July 8, 2016

@ThePTC The network works to ensure that this does not happen again and programming restrictions are recognized for all Henkel brands. 2/2
— Henkel (@Henkel) July 8, 2016

@Henkel Thank you for reaching out to us and rectifying the situation. We applaud your responsible advertising practices.
— Parents TV Council (@ThePTC) July 8, 2016

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