Amandla! DaimlerChrysler has pulled its controversial campaign for the new Mercedes-Benz SLK AMG convertible after Mail & Guardian readers complained of its insensitivity.
The half-page advertisment (pictured), which first featured in the M&G on June 16, depicts an obviously impoverished, raggedly dressed woman caught in the slipstream of a vehicle that is no longer visible.
The woman is dressed in a natty scarf that is out of place with the rest of her attire, and the advertising agency’s idea was to suggest that this had been picked up after the car zoomed past.
The advert was part of a three-ad campaign, that was pulled after two were flighted, one in the M&G, the other in Business Day.
Storm Janse van Rensburg, one of the readers who complained to the paper, said he initially did not understand the advert, but the more he looked at it the more he became infuriated by its ”exploitative” nature.
”There’s something ethically corrupt about it, which I don’t think was funny or witty,” said Van Rensburg.
”We live in a time where we understand the power of images. Artists can do what they want but if you’re selling a product you need to be sensitive to a whole lot more.”
Maretha Herber, a communications specialist at DaimlerChrysler, which owns the Mercedes-Benz brand, said the ad was not intended to offend anybody, especially homeless people.
”We’ve decided to pull the advert with immediate effect and not flight it again,” said Herber. ”We take the criticism as constructive and will use it in the future.”
However, Herber seemed to defend the logic of the ad, adding that any advertisement ran the risk of negative criticism, depending on the audience. ”The advert makes good sense, but if you don’t understand it, you might take offence.”
Vanessa Pearson, the creative director of Lubedu Leo Burnett, the agency that creates all adverts for Mercedes- Benz passenger and commercial vehicles, said that she thought the backlash could have been minimised had the series of three ads run concurrently.
The other ads, which followed the same theme, featured a young boy with a toupee and a farmer wearing a woman’s hat.
Pearson refused to comment on how much financial damage had resulted from the shelving of the ad.
Leon Grobbelaar of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said that no complaints had been received about the ad and that that the authority had only ruled against Mercedes-Benz on two previous occasions.
These were Volvo’s 2001 challenge to Mercedes-Benz’s ”unsubstantiated claims of manufacturing the safest cars on the road” and a Sandown Motor print advertisement in 2005 for a Mercedes-Benz C Class vehicle, which failed to include all relevant financial information.