Social media misfire of the week

[Sebastian Cobb]

Advertising Standards have received complaints and will investigate them

Unless they paid for promotion (which, if they are telling the truth about the budget, they can't have done) then I suppose it's their right to post what ever they want within common decency laws etc

Even if it is unfunny shite

[Icehaven]

Her profile pic appears to legitimise degradation and humiliation against dogs, perhaps the RSPCA need to be informed.

[Thomas]

Imagine seeing an advert and not only paying enough attention to remember the details of it, but then going "ooh, that's a good advert". A living hell.

This comment from social media, quoted upthread, bothered me -

Deborah: This is brilliant!! It is so funny and I really won't be complaining. Make me want to shop there more

'Makes me want to shop there more'. Why would you say that of an advert? They're designed to manipulate you. Don't openly brag on the company's behalf when it has worked. Unless you want to, obviously, fair enough. But coming after the proclamation that Deborah 'won't be complaining', it feels like a dig at people who are annoyed by the ad, as if shopping more at Poundland is a way at getting back at the offended.

More confusingly, Poundland is a shop of convienence. Why wouldn't a person already shop there as much as they need to? I understand if it attracts new customers, but Deborah evidently already shops there. I frequently pop into Dealz, Ireland's incarnation. A good advert, if such a thing could exist, won't prompt me to pop in 'more' than I already do to get teabags and toilet paper.

I think these feelings stem from my prejudice against all adverts.

[idunnosomename]

AMERICA FIRST

[Fambo Number Mive]

Quite amusing to see Poundlands Twitter feature a profuse apology for a messy store following pictures of two elf's about to shave and an elf bondage taped to a wall. It does seem that their campaign has worked. Expect more of this from retailers. Lots of "I never usually shop in your store but I will now" on Twitter. People seem to think that their campaign is some kind of heroic anti PC stand.

Jason Manford's got involved as well

https://mobile.twitter.com/disneypins84/status/943943611758141441/photo/1

[bgmnts]

Are we going to see an ideological partisan split in stores now? That would be the final straw I think.

[garbed_attic]

Maybe psychologically this is reaction on the behalf of the public to the intensity of sexual abuse allegations over the last few months. If they invest in a fictional sex deviant as a hero then no-one gets hurt. Just like how it was with Keith Lemon.

[biggytitbo]

I was in Poundland the other day (to buy some canned air) and I noticed two interesting developments - Poundland are defying their entire raison d'etre by selling loads of stuff that's more than a pound and even odder, Poundland now have their own clothes department.

Imagine buying your clothes from Poundland.

[Gwen Taylor on ITV]

Yeah and imagine getting your food from a food bank.

[Rocket Surgery]

Jason Manford's got involved as well

https://mobile.twitter.com/disneypins84/status/943943611758141441/photo/1

I thought Manford had retired from social media out of embarrassment. He's bang on the money there, though. The temptation to make a quip about the average IQ of people who use Twitter is pretty intense.

[Fambo Number Mive]

I know the more I talk about this the more I help promote a certain discount retailer, but I do think that this is the start of businesses using polarising advertising to try to appeal to a particular political demographic.

To address the balance, here is a report on Poundland's workfare scheme:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/30/poundland-work-free-government-scheme-dwp

Poundland has been criticised for employing jobseekers, without pay, for up to two months under a deal with the government.

Several of those who have worked on the scheme told the Guardian they had worked up to 30 hours a week for at least three weeks stacking shelves in Poundland. They were told that the work experience was voluntary but one said: "I had no say in it really."

It's not clear how many jobseekers have been used by Poundland under the scheme as the government said it did not collect information centrally and the work experience was managed locally by jobcentres across the country. However, one store in Bolton has taken on 21 placements since last August, according to information provided in response to a freedom of information request by the Boycott Workfare pressure group.

"Considering it is supposed to be work experience you'd think they would teach you how to work the till. But we have just been stacking shelves all day," one person on the scheme told the Guardian.

More than one work experience participant in Bolton said that their local jobcentre had provided a bus pass to cover travel expenses and suitable clothing – of black trousers and a polo shirt. Poundland paid no wages and made no other contribution. Participants said they were not provided with any paperwork to record the time they had spent in a store.

[Fambo Number Mive]

H&M apologise for using a black child to modle a hoodie with "coolest monkey in the jungle" on it: http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/08/news/companies/hm-apologizes-monkey-hoodie/index.html

[Cerys]

You see, I find myself feeling conflicted about that one.  We've been referring to little kids in general as 'monkeys' for years - why discriminate against child models because of the colour of their skin?  Maybe the kid in question really, really loved that hoodie - and now, just because some racist cunts use 'monkey' and 'ape' and 'gorilla' and 'jungle' in their so-very-clever rhetoric, that kid is going to feel singled out in a negative manner. 

[bgmnts]

So can you not refer to a black child as being a cheeky little monkey?

[idunnosomename]

He's not even the coolest monkey in The Beatles

[Cerys]

So can you not refer to a black child as being a cheeky little monkey?

Apparently not.

[St_Eddie]

Apparently not.

I used to be friends with an Indian lad.  He told me that he'd punched a fella during a game of football because this guy had referred to him as a "cheeky little monkey" and how terribly racist that was.

A proper "mate." moment.

[Dr Syntax Head]

I don't like men referring to me as 'mate'. I am not their 'mate' and never will be because I am heterosexual.

You see where this is going right? I hate this world sometimes.

[Paul Calf]

Its an idiotic thing for them to have done; almost certainly a symptom of cost-cutting. It's obviously an image produced by an algorithm grabbing the product and a model and combining the two I doubt that kid ever wore that garment. H&M are clearly not racist (values of the Carphone Warehouse?) and 'optics' is just another euphemism for the kind of shallow, insincere, insubstantial bullshit to which we should no longer be pandering.

Perhaps this will teach them to pay someone to actually look at their SKU page assets before they go live.

[biggytitbo]

When I heard about that coolest monkey story I immediately thought the racist people where the ones who pointed it out and shouted 'racist'. Otherwise its entirely innocent.

[Ray Travez]

He's not even the coolest monkey in The Beatles

+karma

[JoeyBananaduck]

Publicity stunt.

[popcorn]

Legend Garys

Legend Garies.

Legends Gary.

[phantom_power]

When I heard about that coolest monkey story I immediately thought the racist people where the ones who pointed it out and shouted 'racist'. Otherwise its entirely innocent.

Of course H&M aren't racist and it wasn't intentional but it is a nit tone deaf and someone in the marketing department should have realised it would cause a furore. It doesn't make the professionally offended any less intolerable but it is true.

Someone on Twitter reckoned the "Jungle Survival Expert" jumper was off as well (worn by a white model) but I am not sure what the problem with that is

[biggytitbo]

The 'Slut in Training' one was a bit off too, their toddler department ought to be ashamed.

[Hobo With A Shit Pun]

Legends Gary.

Legends Garé

[JoeyBananaduck]

God, it's all so fucking boring. Fuck t-shirts, fuck slogans, fuck viral marketing and lets all get on with life. As others have said, the only people who see 'black kid' the word 'monkey' and think 'racism' are racists. I see the word monkey, you see the word monkey. We see 'cheeky monkey', kids are little monkeys. Everyone's got a fucking self-righteous cause these days. Your local charity shop needs staff, your local soup kitchen needs servers. Nah, let's all go on Twitter and show how good we pretend to be.

[Utter Shit]

When I heard about that coolest monkey story I immediately thought the racist people where the ones who pointed it out and shouted 'racist'. Otherwise its entirely innocent.

That is nonsense. Being aware of the history of words like monkey being used to insult black people does not make you racist, nor does making that association and seeing the potential problem.

As has been mentioned, it's almost certainly a result of stupidity and laziness rather than anything deliberate, so you'd like to think an honest and contrite mea culpa would be enough to end the story...but then I'm saying that as a white man who hasn't had to put up with racism at all levels my entire life, if I was black maybe I would feel differently.

[Utter Shit]

God, it's all so fucking boring. Fuck t-shirts, fuck slogans, fuck viral marketing and lets all get on with life. As others have said, the only people who see 'black kid' the word 'monkey' and think 'racism' are racists. I see the word monkey, you see the word monkey. We see 'cheeky monkey', kids are little monkeys. Everyone's got a fucking self-righteous cause these days. Your local charity shop needs staff, your local soup kitchen needs servers. Nah, let's all go on Twitter and show how good we pretend to be.

Where do you live? Presumably in a place where black people don't have a history of being referred to as monkeys? That is the only reasonable explanation for saying that.

[jobotic]

God, it's all so fucking boring. Fuck t-shirts, fuck slogans, fuck viral marketing and lets all get on with life. As others have said, the only people who see 'black kid' the word 'monkey' and think 'racism' are racists. I see the word monkey, you see the word monkey. We see 'cheeky monkey', kids are little monkeys. Everyone's got a fucking self-righteous cause these days. Your local charity shop needs staff, your local soup kitchen needs servers. Nah, let's all go on Twitter and show how good we pretend to be.

Like when black football players used to get bananas thrown at them. The real racists were the ones who thought it was racist - they associated the bananas with black players right?

This is isn't the same but it happened in the context of the above.