Harvey Nichols' 'pant-wetting ad' sparks controversy

London, June 9 (ANI): The department luxury store Harvey Nichols is facing criticism for their latest advertisement campaign, which shows a woman wetting herself.

Thousands of flyers featuring the image have been posted and emailed to customers in Britain to promote the shop's summer sale.

The leaflets feature a skinny blonde model posing both standing up and lying down with a dark wet patch spreading across her crotch.

Under each picture, the slogan reads: "The Harvey Nichols Sale. Try to contain your excitement."

But some shoppers have been angered by the toilet humour.

"I couldn't believe it when I saw the flyer, I almost did a double take," the Sun quoted Danielle West, 21, student from Birmingham as saying.

"I know shops need to try to stand out to get attention but this is surely going too far. It could really offend people. Seeing something like this makes me think twice about buying things from there.

"It's a disgusting image and I find it deeply offensive," she said.

And the ads were just as unpopular on Twitter.

One user said: "Really, Harvey Nicks? Really? They're certainly pushing the boundaries."

Another woman tweeted: "That absolutely does not make me the slightest bit inclined to shop there!"

And another wrote: "We received this in the post, hideous! It makes me think of their sale goods as being soiled :(, while one poster merely said: "Oh how the mighty have fallen!"

Defending its latest ads, a spokeswoman for Harvey Nichols said that through the commercial the company wanted to capture the excitement in a humorous manner.

"We developed the campaign to promote our summer sale and capture the excitement in a light-hearted, humorous way," the spokeswoman said.

"The images in our advertising were designed to be a visual representation of a well-known phrase.

"During the production of the campaign, we researched the use of this expression in popular culture and social media and were satisfied that is both commonplace and invariably used in a playful, inoffensive manner, which was in keeping with the tongue-in-cheek spirit in which we intended our campaign to be taken," she added.

The controversial campaign comes after the company narrowly avoided a ban from the Advertising Standards Authority for its infamous 'Walk of Shame' advert, which ran on TV last December. (ANI)