City of Toronto refuses to say if 'slut' ad drew complaints
· Toronto Sun
If the City of Toronto has egg on its face over a recent ad campaign, it isn’t telling.
A restaurant chain called Eggslut, which opened its first Canadian location weeks ago, has bought ads on TTC property that boast in bold block letters: “There’s a new slut in town.” In comparatively microscopic font, between the words “new” and “slut,” is the word “egg.”
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The Toronto Sun asked City Hall if the ad campaign resulted in complaints but didn’t get a clear answer.
Astral Media, a company that handles outdoor advertising such as billboards, “is responsible for overseeing advertising displayed on transit shelters and information pillars and conforms to Ad Standards guidelines,” Ashley Curtis, general manager of the city’s transportation services division, said in a brief statement Friday.
“This particular advertising campaign ends this week, so we will begin to see these ads removed in the coming days.”
The Toronto Transit Commission referred all questions to the City of Toronto.
Ad Standards, the Toronto-based organization formerly known as Advertising Standards Canada that upholds the ad industry’s code of professional practices, told the Sun in a statement on Friday that any complaints – including the subject of those complaints – would be confidential.
Representatives for Eggslut also did not respond to a request from comment.
Eggs on a bun: $15
The term “egg slut” is widely attributed online to celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, who used it not as an insult but to express his own love of eggs.
The Eggslut restaurant sells egg-based sandwiches as well as a dish, featuring an egg atop potato puree, that it simply calls “Slut.” It comes with baguette slices and costs $10.49.
Customers lined up on April 30 when the Los Angeles-based chain opened its location on King St. W, between Spadina Ave. and Bathurst St., complete with a live DJ. The website eggslut.ca says another location is coming to Yonge and Dundas Sts.
The Toronto locations are part of an international expansion campaign that has seen Eggslut restos open in Tokyo, Japan, London, England and Perth, Australia.
In that last city, however, the breakfast spot reportedly opened as Burgers by ES . It’s not clear why exactly the company didn’t use the Eggslut name there, but another business was denied the right to use that name years before, as the regulator found it “undesirable.”
The chain has also taken flak for selling eggs on a bun for about $15 – the price of its bacon-and-cheese sandwich. In the headline for its review of a London location, Britain’s Independent called that Eggslut “as uninspiring as the name suggests.”
Ad Standards’ code says it’s unacceptable to “demean, denigrate or disparage” groups of people or to “undermine human dignity.” It’s unclear if the Eggslut posters would be found to miss the mark judging by those criteria.
Jessica Yared, who serves as the communications lead for Ad Standards, said in a statement that complaints are reviewed by a panel made up of industry experts and the public.
“Where an ad is found to violate the code, the advertiser is asked to amend or withdraw the advertising,” Yared wrote. “If an advertiser fails to co-operate, we will notify host media that an ad they carry was found to violate the code.”