An important debate?

Sexism has been in the Danish media a lot lately. Fitness World has made a very debated commercial, that has been deemed sexist.
The commercial shows a bunch of 'hot women', and a male voice asks. "What you want to be called in 2015+" He proceeds to (cat-)call the women different hashtags, like #Snack, #bootylicious and what loosely translates to "Would like to do (her)". Very gender specific, and to me, very sexist.

So what has all this got to do with business, you ask. Well, the thing is, that even though Fitness World has removed the commercial and replaced it with one a lot less sexual, they have still gained a lot of attention for initial commercial. If people continue to be outraged, and talk about how sexist and immoral this commercial is, all they do, is give more attention to the brand behind the commercial. As a villain in a Bond movie once said: “There's no news, like bad news."

And that is just the thing. Don't you, as a company, have an obligation not to offend for the sake of being 'edgy' or 'controversial'? Isn't it better to try to make good, ethical, yet funny commercials rather than cheap and sexual ones? Or was this really the best Fitness World can come up with?

One has to wonder, if it was not Fitness World's plan all along, to get people talking about it? And then taking down the commercial, only to exchange it for a another one, one that is completely bland? They even got me talking about this - but instead of focusing on the sexist tones of the commercial, I noticed that they broke their own membership rules in regards to outfits. So I commented, and that got a lot of track. I had fun writing back to all the 'haters' who just called me a feminist and fat. These posts got deleted though, but you can read the rest of it here (in Danish)...

SEE THE DEBATE ON FITNESS WORLDS FACEBOOK PAGE HERE

Pine and Gilmore talks about experience economy being the step on the 'Progression of Economic Value'-ladder, we are on now. In order to sell a brand or a product, you attach an experience to it, making the value for the costumer go up. They also predict the next step to be 'transformations' - meaning companies have to guide transformations for the consumer. It can come in the form of preferences, loyalty or something else.

As the transformation usually happens internally, it can be hard to measure it in the customer. Except if we are talking about a person going to the gym.
Gym memberships are selling the ULTIMATE form of transformation - you have a body "we help you transform your body, into what you want it to look like." A lecturer of mine, Kris Østergaard form Dare2 jokingly said that gyms should change their fees from being monthly, to you paying for the amount of transformation you got. Meaning, if you stayed at home, you wouldn't pay anything, because no transformation occurred.
It is of cause a pretty unlikely idea (because how do you measure transformation?) - but it would certainly make the gym seem more trustworthy and personal. It might even inspire people more to go there?

My question is this: Even though gyms are selling the idea of transformations (which is very well illustrated in the before mentioned commercial), don't they have an obligation not to sexualise it, or are the fact that people go to the gym, because they want to look good naked, all that matters?

I would really like to know what you think - not about the commercial, but about the tactic to make an offending commercial to gain notice. Let me know in the comments below.