A series of ads entitled “U of T Dental Plan” has cropped up on Facebook, causing concern among University of Toronto students and administration.
College Street Dental is the dental office behind the ads, which display faces of young, attractive women, some showing generous amounts of cleavage and not all of them showing their teeth.
“I feel like they’re exposing females for the wrong reasons,” said U of T student Britnee Lam. “They’re using these images for their sex appeal to lure people in so they pay attention to them. These images are hardly appropriate for what they’re trying to advertise.”
The images clash with the university’s stance on equity, which, according to a statement released by the Status of Women Office, is “gender equity for all women students, staff, and faculty at all three campuses.”
The ads are stamped with the university’s logo and crest, which have confused students into thinking that the campaign is run by the university itself.
“I had thought it was run by U of T, but the images didn’t fit their character… They don’t seem to look as professional as other U of T images and ads,” said Lam.
Despite what the advertising suggests, there is no affiliation between U of T and College Street Dental.
“This dental clinic is not affiliated with U of T and we do not endorse its use of our name in its publicity,” said Laurie Stephens, St. George Campus’ director of news and media relations. “This sort of thing happens periodically, and when we learn about it, we take action. The university will be contacting the clinic and asking them to cease and desist… It’s a breach of copyright.”
Another issue that arose with the ads is their unexplained and incongruous use of celebrity photos. On inspection, images of women like Carrie Underwood, Megan Fox, and Jessica Alba were used in some these promotions.
Doctor David Cheng of College Street Dental said that the promotions on Facebook were something they were “experimenting with.”
“We’re going to be eliminating that,” he said about the use of the university brand and celebrity photographs. “We did it initially just to experiment… We’re just starting off, we’re trying new things, we’re working things out.”
College Street Dental, near the corner of College and Spadina, gets roughly 60 per cent of its business from students from the University of Toronto.
“I’m trying to reach out to students, help students,” he said, mentioning that many students are so busy they don’t think about their dental hygiene.
According to Cheng, his business was using an unnamed marketing company to generate the ads, and he’s already spoken with them to remove the copyrighted material.
“[The new ads] won’t have any logos or anything like that. We’re maybe using stock photos, just general student pictures. We’re going to change things.”
Despite the promised change, the ad campaign still rubs some students the wrong way.
“I think it is wrong for a company to take advantage of the university by basically making it seem like they are in partnership with the school,” said Kiera Tremblay, a student at the University of Toronto, Scarborough campus. “It is completely misleading to students by pasting our name onto their company. Students will go there thinking they are supporting their school while getting a great deal, but then realize it is really just some random company benefitting from our school’s name.”
As of Saturday, College Street Dental has taken down all U of T insignia on their ads.
