Lacta chocolate’s Valentine’s Day campaign featuring 28 couples kissing and hugging while holding a bar of the popular brand have fuelled controversy in Greece.
The #actforlove marketing campaign was created to promote love and social diversity by casting the spotlight on different types of couples and telling their stories. The couples are heterosexual, disabled, racially different, of all ages, but it was the homosexual couples that drew the majority of trolls on social media.
Photographer, Chloe Kritharas Devienne was surprised by the negative reaction. Her face was splattered across Twitter with commenters saying: “This is the photographer who did this”. Critics posted links to her work with refugees and labelled her as “excessively liberal”.
She told Reuters that in Greece people are very homophobic. “The church has made it very clear it considers homosexuality a sin,” said Devienne. “Personally I love both men and women. I thought that nothing would make me happier than to have these pictures all over Athens so that homophobic people are forced to look at them…”
Lacta urged Facebook users to “embrace all tastes of love”. The brand, popular with children, has drawn criticism for this purpose. “Little children will see this! What standards will you pass to them.” wrote one critic, while denizens told the brand that the campaign was “shameful”.
