Maybelline’s “Be Gerald’s Girl” online promo trolled with pornography

Posted on June 10th, 2011. Written by Rico.

Update: Less than an hour after we broke this story, the site has been taken down “for maintenance”.

As self-promotion online, Maybelline is letting visitors build their own commercial with Gerald Anderson at begeraldsgirl.com. The problem is that it seems no one is checking what people submit to the site.

Fans of the Filipino celebrity (whether male or female) submit two photos of themselves, to create the ad. Maybelline’s online app integrates these two images in a dynamically-generated video, featuring Gerard getting ready for a movie date with the submitter.

To fit in properly with the ad, people are asked to upload photos of their “best smile” and “best shot” respectively. The first pic ends up as the wallpaper of Gerald’s iPhone 4 and on a picture frame that the celebrity picks up and kisses. The second one appears on a Maybelline billboard that Gerald points to and says “That’s my girl!” while driving to his date.

But it looks like the system accepts any kind of image, regardless of the content. Which is why begeraldsgirl.com features this totally explicit, NSFW video (again, the link is not safe for work). The video was brought to our attention by a reader who wished to remain anonymous.

In that video, Gerald Anderson is shown kissing a picture of a man’s privates—with the genitals themselves in bondage! (we are not kidding). The billboard Mr. Anderson encounters on his drive? It features a nude transsexual. Both the source images are clearly pornographic in nature. Here are censored, safe for work frames from the video below.

Clearly, Maybelline (or its PR) could have avoided this problem if it required all submitted photos to undergo review before appearing live on begeraldsgirl.com. It’s not really nice to expose your endorser or celebrity talent to the trolls of the internet!