Indian Ford advertisement stirs up ire

Now, for this week in idiot news - an advertisement for Ford in India is stirring up quite a controversy.  If you haven’t seen these things making their way through the normal media channels, there are three of them and each features people bound and gagged in the trunk of a Ford car while the driver smiles and looks back.  The biggest offender of the three ads shows Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with three prostitutes in his trunk.  In a country where gang-rapes and women’s rights are taking center stage in politics, this isn't exactly the best marketing move.

The other two ads feature Paris Hilton with some Kardashians tied up and a race car driver with three of his rivals tied up.  The one with the PM is apparently supposed to mock his involvement in a case where he was accused of hiring prostitutes.  The way this is depicted, however, isn't exactly the most intelligent way to get the joke across.  With rape so prominent an issue, what brainless marketing team thought this one up?  While some at Ford may think of trunk space as where to stash your kidnapped women, that’s not how most of us perceive it, particularly those involved in promoting women’s rights in India.

Naturally, Ford made a big official apology once people started complaining and set about on an investigation to see who came up with the ad and how it made it onto the Internet without Ford HQ’s approval.  The result of the investigation, if Ford is to be believed, showed that the ads were a product of an Indian marketing division and that they had no approval to use them.  That’s the official story anyways, which I hope would be truth considering the alternative is that Ford execs are not only really stupid, but extremely insensitive to what’s happening in the region.

In either case, there were a few firings to fix the problem.  It still remains to be seen whether there will be any political backlash against Ford, either officially or in the form of protestors.  With much political progress being made for women in India, these sorts of things only point out that there is still plenty of work to be done before things are set right.

Ford Car advert courtesy of freemalaysiatoday.com