Transport for London has banned a new Trinity Mirror poster campaign from London’s Underground network.
The poster, which shows a female model in a bath with her elbows poking out, is a parody of The Sun’s continuing use of topless models on its Page 3.
The Daily Mirror ran the ad across the entirety of its own page 3 today.
Trinity Mirror’s marketing push accompanied a redesign of the Sunday and Daily Mirror unveiled this weekend. The “seven-figure” campaign is intended to reposition the papers as “the intelligent tabloid”.
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The ad featuring the woman has been designed to initially look like she is exposing bare breasts. It is accompanied by the hashtag #Madeuthink and the strapline: “We’re not like other tabloids”.
The Mirror said that the new campaign was its first major marketing push for 10 years.
Editor-in-chief Lloyd Embley said last week: “There's one thing which really makes the Mirror stand out from the tabloid crowd, we have a brain and so do our readers. And that's the message we're driving home here.”
The poster is one in a series that will form part of Trinity Mirror's campaign, along with TV ads due to run from this Saturday.
A Mirror source said of the campaign: "It embodies all of the things we're doing [with the paper]."
The campaign comes as News UK revamped its Sun on Sunday a week ago, installing Victoria Newton as editor and signing former Mirror stalwart Tony Parsons as a new columnist.
News UK has repeatedly stood by its use of topless models on Page 3 of The Sun, although they do not feature in The Sun on Sunday. Despite growing pressure from the No More Page 3 campaign, both editor David Dinsmore and News UK chief executive Mike Darcey have backed the feature, claiming the majority of Sun readers are in favour of it.
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