The men’s and women’s rowing teams at Warwick University have both stripped down to their birthday suits in the name of charity. The real beneficiaries? All of us.
Every year, the men’s team does a naked calendar to raise awareness against homophobia, pairing up with Sport Allies to combat the problem.
This will be the fifth consecutive naked calendar for the men, but the first they’ve printed off since catching fire on social media.
Last year was the first for the women, who are shipping out their 2015 calendars even as we sit here.
Speaking of firsts: the women became the first of the two clubs to come under fire for their naked ways. Their Facebook page was recently banned, as per the company’s pornography guidelines. This had the women crying foul, as no such complaint was brought against the men.
Their 2013 calendar raised about a thousand dollars for the women’s team, and 2014 saw the take more than double that.
Of Facebook’s double standard, organizer Sophie Bell said:
They say it is because of nudity but we are not violating any of their terms and all the pictures we post are not indecent images or inappropriate.
It is awful for us because we had over 2,000 likes which provides us with a large platform for reaching out to our target market. We are students so we don’t have a marketing budget so we do use social media as the main way of marketing it.
Like what you see? Agree with Sophie’s marketing strategy? You can follow the women on Twitter, and the men on Instagram.
