PrintApril 9, 2008
Absolut Vodka Pulls Controversial Ad
An ad showing California and the American southwest prior to their becoming part of the United States that asked the viewer to imagine "An Absolut World" where that might be true again has been pulled by the company.
The distillers of Sweden's Absolut vodka have withdrawn an advertisement run in Mexico that angered many U.S. citizens by idealizing an early 19th century map showing chunks of the United States as Mexican.The reason US media outlets "picked up on the ad" is almost exclusively due to Michelle Malkin's coverage of the controversy and her 175,000 daily readers who responded with a massive write in protest to the company.
The billboard ad has the slogan "In an Absolut World" slapped over a pre-1848 map showing California, Arizona and other U.S. states as Mexican territory. Those states were carved out of what had been Mexican lands until that year. Although it was not shown in the United States,
U.S. media outlets picked up on the ad, and after a barrage of complaints, Absolut's maker said on Sunday the ad campaign would cease.
The complaints from Americans included calls to boycott Absolut with several bar owners saying they would no longer serve the vodka in their establishments.
Absolut should have realized that their market is a global one and targeting a specific market is fine as long as you don't offend consumers in another. This is a hard and bitter lesson for businesses all over the world and has no doubt been noted by international ad firms.
FOLLOW US ON
Recent Articles
- Don't Trust Me, I'm a Doctor
- China Doesn't Know What to Do With Trump
- The Trump Administration Is Cleaning Up Our Military Academies
- No to Automatic Birthright Citizenship
- President Trump Can Snatch a Deep-Water Port in South America that China Covets
- The FBI Knew All Along
- Sotomayor’s Specter: No, the Alien Enemies Act Can’t Deport Americans
- Democrats Trade Morality for Madness
- Bringing Immigration Policy into Focus
- Judicial Imperialism: The House of Boasberg and the Left’s War on Sovereignty
Blog Posts
- Remembering the great Mario Vargas Llosa -- RIP
- Harvard declares that it’s entitled to have taxpayer money subsidize its free speech
- Peace in our time...with Iran?
- A newly discovered Teotihuacan altar reminds us that our child sacrifice is worse than theirs was
- New study: ‘Liberals generally trust science more than conservatives’
- Bondi DOJ allegedly evading FOIA requests for Epstein documents
- Whoopi Goldberg calls for higher taxes to keep the government big and well fed
- Why is Bondi’s DOJ still prosecuting a pistol brace owner?
- ‘Perceived foes’
- The echoes of valor
- Junk science at NOAA about to come to an end
- Donald Trump, free trade champion
- Junk science and air pollution
- Securing the border
- DOGE removes a dead-ender fighting his own Fallujah at the Social Security Administration -- and the left melts down