Let Meryl Streep go to Prada hell, or Zeit Boulos hell, or Roadster hell

 

In 2001 Rachid Daif wrote a novel "Tostofel Meryl Streep" which was translated as "Let Meryl Streep go to hell". So today I was made aware of an AI of Meryl Streep advertising Zeit Boulos which came back hot on the heels of Roaster using her image with the line from movie The Devil Wears Prada "Don't be ridiculous Andrea, everyone wants this" as she holds a Roadster meal inside a VIP seat in a cinema.

Need I go futher? Roadster and Zeit Boulos are small fish, no one cares about suing them. But this is beyond idiotic. Remember - Microsoft sued a teenage Canadian for establishing a company called Mike Roe Soft which is actually his name. Chasing name and likeness is truly a risky game and no, Meryl Streep would never license her image to some food chain in Lebanon or a company that does Lebanese "moune" (as Boulos oil is trying to rebrand itself - here). So where do we go from here? We go to what happened to the viral gender reveal where the "grandma" looked incredibly young and fresh.

Images below are for brands that used her likeness in ads without authorization:

The woman got plastered on ads for everything and anything. ArabAd asked in their post on Linkedin (here) "where do we draw the line?" my answer was "at decency". Naji Boulos, the current editor in chief at ArabAd replied to me with "The item you requested is currently not available online."

Surely "Teta" (grandma) can sue. But truly we are in an age where advertisers and brands should remember "just because you can, it doesn't mean you should".