Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Snickers update

So, here's the official statement from Snickers:

“As with all of our Snickers advertising, our goal was to capture the attention of our core Snickers consumer, primarily 18-to-24-year-old adult males,” said a spokeswoman for Masterfoods, Alice Nathanson. “Feedback from our target consumers has been positive, and many media and Web site commentators on this year’s Super Bowl lineup ranked the commercial among this year’s best.”

“We know that humor is highly subjective and we understand that some consumers have found the commercial offensive,” Ms. Nathanson said, adding: “Clearly that was not our intent. We do not plan to continue the ad on television or on our Web site.”


They just don't seem to get it. Humor is "highly subjective?" We're not talking about a love or loathing of knock-knock jokes here. We're talking about a "joke" in which you told millions of people that queerness is to be avoided at any cost, even when that cost is physical pain or death. And of course the core Snickers consumer thought this was humorous! As John over at Americablog said, "Yeah, well, any idiot could have told them that homophobia ranks pretty high up there with some members of the 18 to 24 year old adult male crowd. So does racism, Jew-hating, and the sexual harassment of women. Is this what we can expect next from Snickers?"


Still waiting on that apology...

2 comments:

G. Nat Salpigga said...

I've read all of your posts and I can't quite tell whether you are joking or not. What can I say, I'm a little slow at times. Doesn't matter anyway, it's all been fun to read.

Gender Blank said...

It is true that I am a major smartass, so I can see why you might not be able to tell when I'm joking. However, any outrage I express is genuine. I deal with that outrage in various ways, sometimes humorous, often sarcastic, but the outrage is always genuine.

Just out of curiosity, how did you stumble upon my humble blog?