I am in southern AB and people are talking about it here as well and also have nothing good to say about Fluid who may end up drowning in their own.

Thank you for taking an ethical stand on this epidemic of violence against women Fiona.

I like how you stated that the ads reflect the values of the company and boy does this ad do that.

I’m all for making a stand against social injustices in your ads if that’s what your company wants to do. However, I don’t see that in this ad.

What I do see is a company saying “hey, you’ve got quite a shiner there, that’s cool, we’ll still make you look fabulous!”

OR coming from the entirely (I think previously unthought of)angle perhaps these could be considered being geared to male clientel saying that “you can look good beating your missus”.

Whoever these ads were targeting, if the intention was to make a statement about domestic violence, the only thing it said was “if it’s happening, you can still look great”.

I do hope that in this case, there was enough awareness and bad publicity to punish them where it hurts the most, the cash register.

Great post Fiona. I know it must have been difficult to call one of your own (meaning a creator of advertising) out on a bad decision. Definitely a time when I would have resigned the account before doing what the client asked if that’s how the situation went.