TOPICS: Omnicom. Gay PR. Fleishman-Hillard. PR. Mainstream media. PR strategy. Super Bowl. Mars Inc. gets their corporate PR and Snickers brand PR strategy badly wrong. Gay market reaction against Snickers advertisement that seems to rely on homophobia, discrimination and even violence against gay men. Mainstream media chimes in to condemn the anti-gay PR strategy of Omnicom company campaign.You are at the Out Now Gay Market News -- Gay Marketing 101 gay market updates site.
To reach our main site on lesbian and gay market research, gay advertising and gay marketing strategies, visit OutNowConsulting.com. To contact us, email info@outnowconsulting.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is so disappointing that the PR "Practice Group" - the supposed gay market PR agency for Omnicom Group at Fleishman-Hillard International Communications has had nothing at all to say so far about the gay market furore their head advertising and PR agency, Omnicom, has created for them all this week with its homophobic campaign for Mars Inc. Snickers brand candy. Anti-gay advertising is dreadful - pumping it out during Super Bowl when most people could view it - even worse.
If you wonder what we are talking about - just check out how anti-gay the Omnicom created advertising actually was this weekend. See CNN coverage today of this here.
'No comment' anywhere at all so far this week from their global 'gay PR' arm is really quite dispiriting for all of us when we consider that we are talking about an agency that claims to include a 'specialist' gay targeted PR section within Omnicom, a major international communications firm. Their website claims that they "deliver effective, results-oriented programs for our clients based on understanding both the gay and lesbian community and society in general."
You really have to question that claim based on their own silence about this issue all week, and based on how the Mars brand Snickers must be feeling after their homophobic outing at the hands of an Omnicom FH sister-company this past weekend.
When that same firm's head agency (Omnicom) creates a very anti-gay advertisement, even including the bashing of gay men as a part of their 'creative' concept, and then transmits this violence out there for commercial gain - via broadcast and internet during the Super Bowl - yet there is nothing they now choose to say against their own agency's affiliated companies doing this. Good at gay PR? Hmmm.
The bad PR from this is everywhere from USA Today, the New York Times to CNN with more than 1,000 news articles about this issue appearing just today. The NY Times even states that the Snickers controversy is "unusually bad for the Masterfoods division of Mars".
Really quite sad -- and quite telling really. Fleishman-Hillard -- a company claiming to be an active part of the gay community with a "global network, tapping a variety of practice groups"? Hmmm. Not a great deal of client benefit that anyone can really claim to see based on today's evidence.
I will let sample American consumer reaction to the ad campaign speak for itself here if you are wondering what I am speaking of. I even feel sorry for these guys since their gay PR website also claims a skill in "corporate reputation management". Ouch!
Anyone who knows even a little about gay PR and recent gay community history will understand that letting Judy Shepard speak is practically always justified: 'The message these ads send is that gay panic is a license to gay bash. Worse, the ads were developed to specifically reach 18-24-year-old males, the same group most likely to commit anti-gay hate crimes. About the campaign, Matthew Shepard's mother said, "This campaign encourages the same type of hate that led to the death of my son Matthew." '
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation GLAAD even said yesterday that gaining any gay community approval at all was never a serious factor for Omnicom in choosing to run this homophobic advertisement. How on earth does an agency get to this level of 'disconnect' with consumer market realities? There is so much of this stuff out there: for example try these GLAAD and Human Rights Coalition HRC comments.
I really would like to hear from both Omnicom and Fleishman-Hillard about each of their views of the other on this campaign, the strategy behind it and the repercussions for the client brand. If they each claim to be comfortable with this PR situation we should all be worried about their seriousness about the gay consumer and about gay PR.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For further gay marketing information, or to seek gay market advice, please contact:
Ian Johnson, Managing Director, Out Now Consulting
UK landline: +44-20-8123 5288
BE landline: +32-2-514 6443
mobile: +32-4737 60886
web: OutNowConsulting.com
news: Gay Market News - Gay Market Updates by Out Now
Global gay marketing, strategy, PR, training, gay advertising, lesbian and gay market research leaders. Gay Market News is Gay Marketing 101 - The Out Now Gay Market Updates.
OutNowConsulting.com | GayMarketing101.com
Companies marketing & advertising to gays and lesbians.
Better targeting of the lesbian and gay consumer market.
gay market gay advertising gay marketing gay tourism gay travel pink dollar pink pound gay agency advertising marketing travel tourism gay lesbian gay and lesbian market research
2 comments:
My understanding is that Snickers' agency TBWA Chiat/Day and Fleishman-Hilliard's sister shop Porter Novelli handles crisis communications when Omnicom Group agencies run into trouble in the public space.
The Omnicom Group business units, especially their large advertising and PR firms, are run quite independently, so I can understand how the corporate structure could lend to a lack of response from F-H. What I repeatedly find difficult to understand in this industry is that F-H and others apparently have a lack the awareness, common sense and creativity that causes practitioners to see beyond billable hours.
In my opinion you have really missed the point - the ad to me is making fun of men so insecure of their sexuality they feel they have something to prove following accidental contact.
Post a Comment