I was working at a grocery store when 9/11 happened (and was off work that day). A few weeks later, I saw a display of “United We Stand Hand Soap”. :eek: It ended up getting clearanced down to the point where they were almost giving it away, at which time it finally started selling.
And there were all the t-shirts with pictures of the burning towers.
This mattress shop ended up having to close down “indefinitely”. I’m not surprised. That ad was … jawdropping. I knew they were going to get slammed by the internet (although I don’t approve of it, I knew it was inevitable.)
The owner posted a fairly heartsick apology about it all. He and the chick in the ad are related, although it’s not clear how. I’m guessing her life is hell about now.
Italics in the original, quoting from the mattress shop’s FB page.
For those of you who don’t get it, you don’t depict the towers still standing. If you pay attention to the situation, you’d notice we don’t do that. It’s always considered crass.
Yes, I think they just needed a place to put the Coke Zero cans, and so came up with making them the towers. Still should have been obvious that people would get offended.
On September 11, 2015, Devo’s Jerry Casale got married (to a woman young enough to be his granddaughter :dubious: ) and they had a 9/11-themed wedding, with box cutters as wedding favors.
:eek:
I am not making this up.
Am I wrong for laughing at that?
This sing makes song more sense now
No, not that funny but an A for effort.
Room for me in your hand basket?
Only because people get offended at EVERYTHING. They will get offended if you don’t smile at a thing they think you should smile at. Or do smile at a thing they’ve decided nobody should be smiling at. They will make stuff up that never happened and be offended that other people aren’t respecting that made up thing.
Fuck 'em all.
I guess your crass meter was pegging all weekend, then. Even the Sunday comics had various tributes depicting the towers standing. Images of the towers are almost ubiquitous. Count me in as one of those that don’t get it.
I don’t know if I’m offended (I don’t tend to take offence easily), but it seems pretty fucked up to me to using imagery of a disaster to sell Coke. I guess not all people see it like that, but it just strikes me as really, really bizarre.
While we’re discussing offense and what constitutes “tribute”, check out this photo, which surfaced shortly after 9/11. If you’re not excited about clicking, it shows a group of people posing behind a sand sculpture that depicts a sky scraper being struck by an airplane.
The artist is opposed to terrorism, and reportedly does sculptures like this that relate to contemporary events. But memorializing a tragedy with art that depicts the actual moment of awfulness tends not to be well-received by the general public. Imagine for example the hue and cry that would arise if an art exhibit depicted a chunk of JFK’s skull sailing through the air a moment after the impact of the bullet.
It’s an inappropriate display . . .
. . . but frankly I have a hard time understanding where the arbitrary lines are between inappropriate reference, reverence, jingoism, patriotism, commercialism, maudlin emotional pandering, political manipulation, and Orwellian newspeak.
In other words, I am not surprised that people felt that this was a reasonable way to commemorate 9/11, thump their chests patriotically, as well as sell a few cans of soda pop at the same time. It happens every day in thousands of ways across our country, in both more subtle and more overt ways than this.
This may have been a few of those, but the most applicable line in this case isn’t arbitrary or hard to find at all. It is always crass to use references to violence and death, suffered by others, to sell your product, and this was objectively doing that. No one can argue that a display of product, with manufacturer and retailer brandings imprinted on the referential banner, is not a sales device.
Other 9/11-related expressions may indeed be jingoistic, maudlin, or manipulative (for example, a similar cheap banner, without the commercial logos and not associated with specific product), but those are statements at least arguably about the event, issues of aesthetics and politics–fuzzy by definition.
Eh. When our multi-billion dollar sports industry depends upon the exact same kind of flag-waving patriotism to help generate dollars, I don’t see much of a difference.
American flags, the national anthem, veterans on the field, air-force flyovers as marketing tools to sell football and Budweiser while soldiers are busy dying overseas is par for the course.
To me it’s obvious that a 9/11 Coke display is on the wrong side of a line. But I also totally get why that might not be obvious to everybody.
How do people feel about the Budweiser “Twin Towers” Super Bowl ads (Clydesdales bow towards NYC skyline, tag “We’ll never forget,” then Bud logo appears)? 2011 version at - YouTube ; there was another very similar one in 2002. I’ve seen it lauded as “beautiful,” “breath-taking,” “emotional” and similar, but never “offensive.”
ETA: both 2002 and 2011 versions at Budweiser Remakes 9/11 Commercial For Tenth Anniversary
How about mawkish?
Completely overblown reaction. Imho
It’s a display of soda. They meant well. People are so easily offended these days. Chill
Exploiting a national tragedy to sell beer is just as bad as doing so to sell soda. The only difference is the use of the horses.
Not really bothered by the soda display or the beer ad, but that mattress commercial was just vile. As for the wedding with the 9/11 theme – I just don’t have words for that.
