Burger King is now advertising on women's breasts in Russia using 'Tittygram'
Tittygram is a site where anyone can pay to have a message written on model's bare chest, who are only paid around £2 for each photograph
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
Burger King has come under fierce criticism for advertising on "tittygram" - a Russian website which displays messages across the exposed chest of a model.
On the Tittygram website, based in Moscow, customers can pay around £6.65 to have a model write any message (so long as it's 35 characters or less) on their chest.
Within an hour of you order, your custom-made Tittygram photo will pop up in your inbox.
The marketing boffins that run Burger King’s official account on VK.com, Russia’s version of Facebook, clearly found the idea of writing on boobs so completely and utterly hilarious that they decided to get in on the act.
In the photo that appears on page, the phrase “I love Burger King!” is seen scrawled across a woman’s chest and text above the photo promises more.
The caption added to the photo says: “Do you want this to be your name? Every week the most active community member will receive this kind of named message. It’s not just your Whoppers that cooked on a real fire, everything with us is on fire.”
Many were left unimpressed by Burger Kings actions with user Anastacia Zarechenskya commenting: “Does Burger King need customers so badly that they will stoop to such vulgarity?”
Katay Tarelinka wrote: “If your product was any good you wouldn’t need sexism to sell it.”
Tittygram markets itself as “Uber for Boobs” and has, according to CEO Vladimir Gritsenko, proved so popular that staff are working 24 hours a day and over 2,000 photos have been sent out already.
According to The Moscow Times the majority of Tittygram users send birthday or congratulations messages.
Models are reportedly paid only around 150 roubles (around £2) per photo and, as with Uber, there is a surcharge to customers is demand is high.
Gritsenko defended his company against accusations of sexism, saying: “Nobody forces them to do it.”
He said he doesn’t allow offensive messages to appear on the models and was shocked when the site launched in the US at the start of April and around 20 per cent of would-be clients wanted “bad words”, which would be “offensive for the models and for other people”.
Burger King could not be reached for comment but it is understood that the use of the Tittygram was a decision taken by individuals in charge of the social media account rather than the company itself.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments