The Forbidden fruit of bawdy billboards

The website, adameve.com, isn't one to which your Sunday school teacher will be referring you. But, according to an Atlanta-area outdoor advertising company, hundreds of parents were worried that their children would think it was, so billboards advertising the adult toy store company and its website came down Feb. 5.
According to an executive with Infinity outdoor advertising who did not want to be identified, the billboard company received "several hundred phone calls from disgruntled parents during the few weeks that the advertisements were up.
The ads feature a woman's facial profile and the Web address. No cleavage or backside or other body parts — the kind associated with other outdoor adult advertisements — were visible.
"Those are not ours, he says of the more voluptuous billboards. "This is the first one of this kind we've ever done. We were able to approve the creative. This was not a creative issue. It totally had to do with the fact that a mother could be driving down the road with her 12-year-old and see it and go to the website and be offended by it, especially here in the Bible Belt.
Roseanne Licciardi, media director for Adam & Eve says that she was given the understanding that Infinity caved into political pressure form right-wing state senators to remove the billboards, but calls from CL to senators who represent districts where the nine billboards were located turned up no such information. Infinity will not comment on what part political influence may have played in the decision to nix the ads.
"I've heard nothing about it, says State Sen. Bart Ladd, R-Doraville. "Except for when a news reporter called asking about it.
Infinity is one of the two largest outdoor advertising companies in the country. Its rival, Eller Inc., stopped accepting ads from adult entertainment businesses a few years ago, according to Eller's regional director Chris Russell.
"People in Atlanta are not apathetic, says Russell. "If we put up something questionable, we'd hear about it.