gummed up

“Extreme Fuse” gum got its name from consumers according to hotspex and evokes the idea of a short fuse as you can see by the ad below…

But, using an ad campaign poking fun at a short fuse and punching your girlfriend in order to sell gum is ok? Not according to some peeps. My colleague is a hardcore, anti-violence advocate and she sent a scathing letter to the execs at Wrigley to complain.

Guess what their response was? Wrigley says they would like to think that they use tongue-in-cheek humour, in an amusing, light and fun manner. They didn’t mean for the ad to imply a jealous boyfriend knocking out a girlfriend but rather knocking out another potential suitor. They’ve instructed their ad agencies to avoid this in the future and will immediately remove this advertising from the market. Good on yah! And, taking full responsibility! (yah, I know after the fact...)

Well, where were their ad agencies or the execs when it came out? Nobody thought it might not imply a suitor is getting punched? Hmmmm, that’s because they were marketing to males – young males as it is pretty clear who their target demographic is by their website.

picture from here And speaking of target demographic… the other night I answered my phone to a female voice introducing herself as a survey company doing a survey on beer. Well, I thought, I could give my two cents about beer and my enjoyment of it – but the next thing that comes out of her friendly cheerful mouth is “May I speak with a male between the ages of 19 – 35?” and I gave her a very forceful and final “no” with no extra explanation which caught her off guard (surprisingly, ‘cause don’t they get ruder responses being call center staff?) and she paused and said, “okay thank-you.” That was the end of it and I was left with a distinct annoyance.

Why? First – they call me at home. Second – they ask to speak with a man (yeah, right!) to get THEIR opinion on beer. Women don't drink beer? And, what planet did this article come from? What is WRONG with these ad peeps? Do they not look around at how many WOMEN drink beer? What? Is gearing advertisements toward women and beer sacrilege? Like, oh, meh, gawd! Women think they’ll get fat (just what we have wanted them to think) if they drink beer so we’ll sell them functional beer compared to dysfunctional?? beer. LMAO

Or, can’t they figure out how to interest us in any other way but to brain wash us into thinking we’re too fat, stoooopid, smelly, ugly, … etc. unless we buy the latest beauty/torture device or cleaning product?

FYI, Unilever is the owner of degree deodourant and in one hand has the DOVE real beauty campaign and in the other the stoooopid commercial I’ve linked above showing a model-thin Stepford wife diving head first out of a second story window and spreading her arms just before hitting the ground (you can see this quite clearly on the tv ad – it zooms out for some reason in the internet ad) so that her head and neck take the full impact of the dive – oh, and she doesn’t die but she has no streaks on her black dress! Whew! Thank goodness!

Gawd, I feel a HOTHEAD moment coming on… where is she when you need her and her bombs?