Vienna exposes the naked truth

The city’s tourism office took a stand against censorship to promote some of its most alluring sights.

von Maud Largeaud , AdForum

The algorithms used to censor social media content sometimes make obviously robotic decisions: like removing a Palaeolithic statuette called the Venus of Willendorf from Facebook just because she happens to be naked. This gave Austrian agency Jung Von Matt and the Viennese tourist office an idea. They created a free account on the 18-plus site OnlyFans (often used for saucy content) to showcase all the gloriously naked figures featured in art and statuary across the city. Art that might have been labelled pornographic by an algorithm – and censored – was fully available for humans to admire. Even if the campaign is unlikely to impact social media policies, it generated tremendous PR coverage for Vienna, despite barely a fig-leaf of media investment, as well as a harvest of awards for the agency.