Good Cheer From The Ad People This Season… And More

Michael Hedges December 12, 2011 Follow on Twitter

The end of year holiday season means many things to many people. For some it’s good cheer, merriment, a little nostalgia and, of course, shopping. For others it’s advertising. And, too, there’s a message.

One of Germany’s biggest advertisers Media Markt launched its seasonal ad campaign at the end of November. Typical for holiday ads one shows happy people discovering gifts under the Christmas tree including, as Media Markt sells consumer electronics, a Playstation 3. The ads’ tag line is “Weihnachten wird unterm Baum entschieden,” roughly translated as “Christmas will be decided under the tree.”

Religious groups are quite upset by the ad campaign. “It cannot be that a company exploits a major Christian celebration in order to increase its sales,” said Federation of Catholic Families national director Claudia Hagen to focus.de (December 9). Another religious leader decried the “disgusting orgy of gifts.” Complaints have gone viral with 20,000 Facebook supporters.

“We are convinced our current commercials cannot be misunderstood as a degradation,” said a Media Markt spokesperson, quoted by Die Welt (December 7). The German Advertising Council (Deutschen Werberat) promised to look into the complaints, which spokesperson Volker Nickel called “palpable.”

Attracting considerable attention in Austria was an ad meant to well-up seasonal nostalgia. This online ad campaign by a liquor distributor crossed a different line as it featured visuals of different bottles with famous figures on the labels, including Adolph Hitler complete with swastika, reported Austrian public broadcaster ORF (December 6). Under a 1960 Austrian law commemorating “items of a banned organization” is a criminal offense. The website offering the “nostalgic bottles featuring historical figures” has disappeared.

Ads prominently featuring children always draw criticism from child protection and obesity watchers. In recent judgments Australia’s Advertising Standards Bureau, an industry sponsored self-regulatory agency, found two television ads perfectly acceptable under the rules because they appeared on programs that attract primarily adult audiences. One for a lollipop brand featured an animated adult-sized doll tripping lightly down a street, waving to smiling children and magically having sweets fall from the sky. Another, showing a couple of kids sharing cookies and airing on a children’s program was allowed because it was deemed to appeal to adult’s sense of nostalgia.

“The board considered that the advertisement was more likely to be taken as being directed to adults who can look back with amusement at school behavior from young boys and girls,” said the Advertising Standards Bureau in its judgment of the cookie ad, quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald (December 11).

The lollipop ad was “created for its adult audience,” offered manufacturer Nestlè Australia in evidence to the Advertising Standards Bureau, “to trigger for them happy memories of their childhood, reminding the of bright, happy good times… and to capture the wonderment of a parade.”

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) released a report (December 7) finding that “community concerns” about junk food advertising had not been addressed sufficiently by “industry initiatives.”   The ACMA did not recommend stiffer regulation or further monitoring.

“As the broadcasting regulator, the ACMA reiterates that it is neither equipped nor resourced to make independent judgments on issues of preventive health,” said chairman Chris Chapman in a statement. Junk food advertising, said the ACMA, should be the preserve of the newly created Australian National Preventive Health Agency.

A slightly more traditional controversy got retailer H&M in hot water, oddly, with the tabloids: photoshop. It’s online catalogue was caught out by Norwegian website Bildbluffen for tacking real model’s heads on virtual bodies. “This is a technique that is not new, it is available within the industry today and we are using it for our Shop Online in combination with real life models pictures and still life pictures,” explained an H&M spokesperson to The Local.se (December 6).

By far the ad campaign from fashion retailer United Colors of Benetton stands out as this seasons most controversial. If the primary purpose for a brand conscious advertiser is turning heads, the “Unhate” campaign jumped the shark and not just for using photo manipulation. The poster campaign, launched mid-November, showed notable and recognizable world figures kissing. The ads were created by in-house agency Fabrica.

Posters were hastily removed after complaints from the Vatican about one depicting Pope Benedict XVI sharing a lip-lock with Egyptian grand sheikh Mohammed Ahmed al-Tayeb. Other unlikely match-ups included US President Barak Obama kissing both Chinese president Hu Jintao and Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez.

The US government wasn’t amused. “The White House has a longstanding policy disapproving of the use of the president's name and likeness for commercial purposes,” said a spokesperson to AFP (November 17). Benetton went ahead (November 29) with a poster installation in Israel depicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kissing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Of course, the ads have gone viral, certainly a benefit in the internet age. Benetton’s ad campaigns, coming about once a decade, have been criticized as “shock-vertising.” Its 2000 ad campaign depicting Americans sentenced to the death penalty featured no Benetton brand clothing.

And we wonder why the Chinese government wants to ban ads on television.

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