NYC Pastor's Tweets Get XXX Billboard Removed
A Coca Cola subsidiary making a vitamin drink removed its four-story ad featuring a half-naked woman from a Manhattan hotel building after the pastor of a church across the street sent just four tweets to the company objecting to it.
Pastor Freddy Wyatt of Gallery Church in Broadway, N.Y., says he was "angry and brokenhearted" when he looked out of his office window on the morning of April 3 and saw a four story sized half-naked woman with the words "XXX you're up" on the billboard. It was an ad for Vitamin Water installed on the side of Broadway Plaza Hotel in front of the church.
"I was brokenhearted for the woman who was on the billboard, knowing thousands of men every day will pass by looking at her picture as an object to be lusted after, not a person to be valued," the 36-year-old pastor says as he shares the story on his church's website. "I was brokenhearted that my little girl, Lillie, after hearing the message that she is loved and valued by God will walk out the doors of her church only to receive another message by the four story billboard, maybe if you look like this, or take your shirt off and sexually tease men, maybe then you'll be valued by them."
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Wyatt decided to take action. "I sent just a few tweets @CocaCola and @Vitamin water telling them my brief thoughts about the billboard and asking them to take it down." He sent four tweets to the company: "I'm a Pastor in NYC & u just put this larger than life garbage up across from @GalleryChurch… the billboard is degrading to women, unhelpful for men... is ur product so bad that you have to put a half dressed woman on a building sized billboard to sell it? ... On behalf of the families in NYC that are seeking to raise respectable & wholesome families, take it down."
Wyatt was surprised when Vitamin Water tweeted back the following day: "…We'd love to discuss your concerns…" He sent his contact information to the company. But when they called, he was away. Yet, the next morning when he again looked out of his office window, he was amazed to see the billboard removed.
"This is a respectable, honorable, and classy decision on the part of Vitamin Water," Wyatt says, adding that he hopes the incident "will spur on a conversation at Vitamin Water that results in the removal of these inappropriate images from all their ads." If they do this, he says, and restore the focus of their ads back on their product, "the drink won't be the only thing that is refreshing. Their ads will be too."
READ: KIDS ARE BEING EXPOSED TO SHOCKING LEVELS OF SEXUAL CONTENT
