A new Bloomingdales ad in their holiday catalog featured a photo of a woman laughing and a man looking at her from a distance. The type between them said “spike your best friend’s eggnog when they’re not looking.”
This sparked a great deal of backlash on Twitter, where people accused the company of promoting date rape. Obviously, Bloomingdales isn’t the first company to face scrutiny for its ads or products. In April, a tagline for Bud Light’s “Up for Whatever” campaign read: “The perfect beer for removing the word ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night”
The store tweeted an apology and told NBC News: “In reflection of recent feedback, the copy we used in our current catalog was inappropriate and in poor taste. Bloomingdale’s sincerely apologizes for this error in judgment.”
This ignorance of social issues seems to be a trend in many modern advertising campaigns, but also in products themselves. Target faced backlash this week for a sweater with the words “OCD: Obsessive Christmas Disorder” across the front. Although Bloomingdale’s, Bud Light and Target each released apology statements for their mistakes, it’s impossible to stand idly by while these companies continue to push campaigns and products that are so outwardly offensive.
What’s sad about the release of this ad is that it isn’t the least bit shocking — the fact is, many of us expect companies to make ignorant mistakes like these. Many have even alluded to the fact that some companies, such as Urban Outfitters, use what is called “outrage marketing” to further push the boundaries of the advertising and sales world.
But even if this campaign was an attempt at outrage marketing, it was pretty unsuccessful. We’ve all heard the old adage, “all press is good press,” but in this case, it seems like that statement isn’t true.
There are many levels of approval through which a new advertisement campaign travels before reaching the public, and it’s exceedingly difficult to believe not one of the people who glanced at this ad thought it to be inappropriate. Did the higher-ups in these companies simply not know any better?
We’d like to imagine that a bunch of old men are sitting around in a smoke-filled room making decisions about these advertisements, a la “Mad Men.” But of course there are many women involved in the strenuous process, and yet these advertisements still find their way into our mailboxes and bus stops. Even still, it doesn’t seem that these high-up executives were proponents of date rape or mocking mental illness. Many ads are meant to be provocative — they push boundaries to elicit the responses they desire from their target audiences. The client wants what the client wants, and it is the job of the ad agency to provide that service.
So, do you go for the money or do you honor your own work? There is almost an unwritten ethical rule in advertising that urges advertising professionals to only create work they believe in. We want to believe that if someone our age were sitting in that advertising meeting, they would have the courage to stand up against issues like this, which so clearly degrade women or other people who these ads target.
However, this may not even be possible. Perhaps some members of the advertising team did speak up and advocate against this specific ad. But the reality is, it’s very difficult to change minds.
This entire issue is rooted in the necessity for change in culture, and backlash against companies’ decisions is a stepping-stone on the route to reaching that change.
It isn’t a matter of waiting until all the crotchety old men we imagine behind closed doors retire — instead, we should be teaching students and advertising professionals of all generations that jokes which target specific peoples, diseases or inappropriate topics such as this aren’t provocative. They’re just offensive.
Had the store been aiming to push envelopes, their goal remains unfulfilled. Perhaps the store underestimated how many people would be angered by the ad — after all, they aren’t necessarily aiming their advertisements toward young college students, most of whom can’t even afford to walk through a Bloomingdale’s. But people often underestimate the power of words, especially on the Internet.
The bottom line is you can’t use women’s bodies or date rape to sell a product. It’s distasteful and unethical, and it leads to more harm than good. No one is going to be offended by the ad, forgive Bloomingdale’s for its mistake and start shopping there. If anything, prior customers will be the ones to forgive and forget. An attempt at being provocative didn’t have to be offensive or demeaning, and in this case, it was both.
