Pretty Women Have Been Used to Advertise Airlines for Years -- Some More Acceptably Than Others

To advertise its 5th anniversary, SkyEurope Airlines -- which bills itself as Central Europe's leading low cost airline -- is giving away 250,000 airline tickets. As part of the promotion, SkyEurope has put Slovakian model Adriana Sklenarikova-Karembeu's image on some of its jets.

This rather innocuous promotion reminds me of another airline promotion that used attractive women to sell plane tickets. In the early 1970s, National Airlines ran a controversial advertising campaign that featured attractive female flight attendants ('stewardesses' in those days) saying, "I'm Cheryl. Fly me." "I'm Joyce. Fly me." And so on.

Not surprisingly, the campaign was denounced by feminist groups who coined their own phrase for the ad campaign's creator F. William Free: I'm Bill. Fire me.

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[Zeid Nasser]

Linked to and Blogged at AdBlogArabia.