Bottoms Up?
David Vance SubstackRead More
HelloFresh, a family-oriented meal-kit delivery service, has just released a Pride Month campaign built around crude sexual innuendo. The company issued an “Official Statement” implying that eating is not everyone’s top priority this month, while promoting high-fibre recipes for customers who are “prepping.”
The discount code BOTTOMSUP was paired with a flushed-face emoji, and the brand responded to customers with quips such as “You ask, we deliver. Literally.”Terms like “top,” “bottom,” and “prepping” are explicit references to gay male sexual practices—specifically anal sex positions and preparatory routines. Yuk.
What HelloFresh presented as activism was little more than a string of juvenile jokes about anal sex. This campaign is misguided on multiple levels. It reduces Pride Month to the narrowest stereotype: an obsession with gay male anal sex. Such content is unnecessary and inappropriate for a mainstream brand whose customers include busy parents, college students, and ordinary households—many with children who may encounter the messaging.
HelloFresh has long positioned itself as wholesome and family-friendly; this raunchy, approach clashes sharply with that image. Corporate rainbow marketing is hardly novel. HelloFresh has followed the same script, only with cruder execution.
A meal-kit company joking about anal preparation is neither sophisticated nor brave—it is cheap, tacky, and exploitative. Framing all objections as “homophobic” is pathetic deflection that avoids accountability for poor judgment.
HelloFresh focus on delivering groceries and convenient meals, rather than attempting to insert itself into customers’ sex lives via discount codes. This campaign is tone-deaf, embarrassing, and inconsistent with the expectations of a broad, mainstream audience.
I wonder will Hello Fresh sack whoever runs its social media because they really should!
