GONE: Ad was removed in the wake of a Flatiron preacher’s Twitter campaign. (J.C. Rice)
This Manhattan preacher was asking for a sign — to be struck down!
Baptist Rev. Freddy Wyatt was so repulsed by a steamy Vitaminwater billboard across the street from his Flatiron church that he embarked on a Twitter mission to have it removed.
The four-story ad on the Broadway Plaza Hotel featured a half-naked woman with the words “XXX you’re up” covering her bosom. It was enough for Wyatt to fear that it would turn the city’s purest of virgins into Delilahs and Jezebels.
“I was angered and brokenhearted,” said Wyatt, 34, who has helmed Gallery Church in a Broadway loft for three years since arriving from Clarksville, Tenn. “This ad takes something that’s pure and precious and just strips it of its value.”
On April 3, shortly after the ad went up, the father of three sent four tweets to Vitaminwater and parent company Coca-Cola demanding that they nix the “larger-than-life garbage.”
The next day, the company left him a voicemail. And on the third day, Good Friday, the soft-drink giant stripped the billboard from its wall on 27th Street.
A Vitaminwater spokeswoman declined to comment. Still, Wyatt is so thrilled that he said he’s serving the sugary drink at today’s service.
“Here’s four tweets from a random pastor, and without even a conversation, they took it down,” he marveled.