What an absolute mess they’ve got themselves into.
Volvic make mineral water. As far as consumable products go, that is just about as inoffensive as it gets. If anything, bottled water is uncontroversial to the point of being plain boring. But that’s fine because people will always get thirty, and they will always be a market for water that’s not straight from the tap.
However, Volvic have got themselves involved in a sectarian row that nobody instigated but themselves. It seems that in this day and age of high-sensitivity, the French company have preempted people being offended, and as result, caused offence. And the worst thing is it was completely avoidable.
This is an advert for Volvic’s orange flavoured ‘touch of fruit’. As you can see, it is hardly pushing the boundaries of taste and decency. In fact, it could even be seen as empowering; a positive depiction of a person with ginger hair – and we all know that red-heads can get picked on at school.
The thing is, Volvic – or their parent company Danone – are worried that the good people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would take deep offence to the ad featuring Nancy the 25-year-old medical student, and therefore will only run it in England and Wales.
Why? Well because it mentions the word ‘orange’ and uses the slogan ‘Orange and proud’. They’re worried that this will be mistaken as some form of tacit support for Protestant fraternal organisation, the Orange order. They’re worried that Catholics will be beside themselves and boycott the drink.
A Danone statement reads:
“We are aware of the sensitivities, which is why these posters will not appear in Ireland, Northern Ireland or Scotland.
“This campaign was designed as a fun and positive brand statement for Volvic as part of our marketing campaign.”
If that sounds seriously OTT and a bit patronising in itself, to suggest that people can’t tell the difference between sectarian propaganda and drinks marketing, you may be surprised to know that Ian Twinn, director of public affairs at the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, agrees with the move.
“I think they have probably made the right decision given that they have gone for that creative idea and that was going to be the advert and then thought oops, it won’t work in Ireland north or south or Scotland – they really could not win.
“There are sensitivities here either way and you really cannot win.”
As you can imagine, the move to self-impose a ban on the advert in some parts of the UK and Ireland and not in others has been greeted with dismay and mockery.
We’re all for people being sensitive to the feelings of others and doing their bit to ward off any form of bigotry, but for once, the term ‘political correctness gone mad’ is probably apt.
https://twitter.com/davidmason23/status/764789242329440256
https://twitter.com/courteneyjayde/status/764918899896881152
.@volvic_uk have over-thought. We gingers are more likely to be annoyed. Orange??!! 😂
#orangeisnotthenewginger https://t.co/JRNsbhFHI1
— Naomi Long MLA (@naomi_long) August 17, 2016
The shock here is the piss poor advertising execs who thought orange hair existed. Red/ginger hair 10/10 btw
— ronan.sol #notbritish (@suffolkvillage) August 17, 2016
https://twitter.com/cccammy1/status/765887374643589120
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