Breitling calls time on sexist advertising

THE chief executive of Breitling, the Swiss watchmaker, has called time on sexist marketing campaigns, promising to make the brand “less virile”.

Georges Kern is scrapping the firm’s notorious events at Baselworld watch fair, which have featured topless models, dominatrixes and “Bangkok masseuses”. Breitling campaigns, including mini-skirted air hostesses and leggy blonde dolls straddling a missile, will also be consigned to history.

“That sort of Betty-on-a-bomb Pop Art is fine if you do it for six months, but it isn’t sustainable,” Mr Kern told the Financial Times. “The Baselworld party simply does not fit with the new way of thinking. It had to go.”

A series of much-derided adverts, in which attractive women displayed their cleavage while serving drinks to male pilots, has also gone.

Mr Kern, who took the helm last July, said in tune with the Time’s Up era, Breitling will promote a more serious side, with adverts featuring “real people” who use its watches. The campaign also targets women, a customer base that had not been high on the Breitling agenda.

The change of direction came after Formula One dropped its “grid girls”, darts tournaments stopped parading “walk-on” girls and the Financial Times itself delivered an exposé of “groping and sexual harassment” at a Presidents Club charity event in January.

The change of heart is thought to have been motivated by British women who in 2016 started a petition demanding Breitling remove an “offensive” mannequin from Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. The change of direction has already begun, with a launch party in Zurich. Hosted by Richard E Grant, the actor, it was described as “sedate”.