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Advertising News South Africa

Woolworths pulls "gender stereotyping" Valentine's Day campaign

#NEWSWATCH: Woolworths has pulled its in-store #LoveAlwaysWins Valentine's Day campaign following social media outrage, this just a few weeks after the retailer's Ubuntu Baba scandal.

The ad features statements that supposedly describe a typical romantic relationship. The female and male versions (respectively) read as follows:

She orders a salad then steals your chips; she takes forever to get ready; she snuggles you to the edge of your bed; she uses your razor to shave her legs; she makes you her Instagram husband; she says she’s ‘fine’ when you know she’s not.
He touches your hair; he doesn’t know the title to ‘your song’; he makes plans without telling you; he uses the wrong emoji’s in text messages and believes he’s entitled to the remote control; he thinks he knows better than Siri.
Another version read:
He uses your perfume for air freshener.
Some people are saying that the campaign is "gender stereotyping" as this messaging suggests that relationships are all heterosexual, not taking gay or lesbian relationships into account, whereas a few are glad to see that "generic and ancient gender roles and stereotypes survived to see 2019".

Goodthingsguy.com sourced some tweets to demonstrate just some of the comments:

Business Insider reports that the retailer has apologised for causing offence, noting that the campaign wasn’t received as intended. “The intention behind our Valentine’s Day campaign was a light-hearted reference to the clichéd idiosyncrasies within so many relationships, rather than any gender stereotyping,” a Woolworths spokesperson told the publication.

For more, read Woolworths pulls Valentine's Day campaign following backlash on enca.com.

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