The 18-second video focuses on three women jumping up and down with excitement. They are at a soccer game. They have beers in their hands. And one is an attractive blonde in a tank top who would later draw comparisons to the buxom B.C.-born actress Pamela Anderson, first discovered at a B.C. Lions football game years ago when she was shown on the stadium's big screen.
The short promo was designed to be part of a season ticket campaign for the Vancouver Whitecaps soccer team, one of a series crafted for social media that showed fans celebrating and having fun at games. They were all shot in slow motion but only the one with the three women provoked the wrath of a small group of people, mostly women, who found it sexist and misogynistic. Yes, someone apparently saw the ad as promoting the hatred of women.
The critical comments initially surfaced on the team's Facebook site, where the ad could first be viewed. The team later received a dozen or so e-mails from people who found it chauvinistic and who felt that showing the women jumping up and down in slow motion was unnecessarily provocative and exploitative. There was some critical commentary on Twitter but not a lot. Still, that was enough for the Whitecaps to pull the ad and apologize to anyone it offended.
People, we have now officially lost our minds.
Or rather, this is the havoc the great feedback machine known as social media can now wreak. Companies are so afraid of "brand damage," of being accused of ignoring the public's concerns, of becoming the next textbook example of how not to behave in the wake of social media criticism, that the easiest thing to do is succumb to the complaints – regardless of how feeble or groundless they are, regardless of how small a sample size the aggrieved represent.
But instead of becoming a case study of ignoring the public's concerns, the Whitecaps may have instead become an exemplar of kneejerk subservience to the woolly complaints of a few nameless, faceless Internet trolls. And you see more of it happening every day because companies have been warned by marketing experts that you ignore tremors on social media at your peril. It's easier and smarter to capitulate.
This is not to say that some companies don't get it wrong from time to time. Ford's decision to kill an ad in India that depicted sexy women tied up in the back of one of its new cars was obvious. The same applies to Hyundai's move to pull an ad perceived to be parodying suicide and McDonald's step to yank a poster viewed as mocking depressed women. Sometimes in a bid to be edgy and clever the ad department loses all grasp of common sense.
That is not what we have here with this Whitecaps flap. Not even close.
Ironically, the team's move likely ended up ensuring more people saw the ad than might have otherwise, such was the uproar created by the team's decision. More than a few news organizations did polls asking people what they thought of the ad: Sexist or not? Overwhelmingly people said it was not.
Emily Guedes is the Whitecaps season ticket holder whose appearance in the ad was the focus of much of the controversy. She was not some Victoria Secret plant but an actual fan, caught cheering. She is baffled by all the fuss. Moreover, she's offended that the Whitecaps decided to take the ad down within hours of posting it because of the negative reaction of a few people on Facebook and Twitter. Through no fault of her own, she's been cast in this drama as some curvaceous blonde bimbo unwittingly taken advantage of to sell soccer tickets when she's nothing of the sort. (She and her friends approved the video before it was posted online).
And she rightly points out the absurd upshot of all this: The Whitecaps now have ads showing men at games, kids at the game, but no women. By rights, this should set off another conflagration of dissent on social media, with the Whitecaps being accused of sexism because their ads exclude women. And then we can expect the Whitecaps to apologize and fashion a commercial showing females in the summer stands – wearing winter coats.
Ms. Guedes has said in interviews that the only people who have a right to be offended by the ad are the three women who are the focus of it. And they're fine with it. They're only affronted by the team's decision to take it down. Her conclusion: People need to lighten up.
Including the Whitecaps, who should listen to their season ticket holders and put the ad back up.
Gary Mason