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Apryl's Advertising Blog

By Apryl Duncan, About.com Guide to Advertising since 2000

Intel Pulls Controversial Ad, Apologizes

Monday August 6, 2007
Intel has pulled an ad featuring a white man surrounded by six sprinters. According to Nancy Bhagat Vice President and Director of Integrated Marketing at Intel, the McCann-created ad was supposed to "convey the performance capabilities of our processors through the visual metaphor of a sprinter." But complaints across the Internet say the dark-skinned sprinters look like they're bowing down to the white man. Instead of issuing the standard press release, Intel made the apology using its blog. "Unfortunately, our execution did not deliver our intended message and in fact proved to be insensitive and insulting," part of the statement reads.

The move has opened up the company to comments on its own blog about the controversy. Some praise the company for making the bold move to issue the apology on the blog and some express their disappointment in the ad. Should more companies use their blogs to allow consumer comments for damage control or does it just make the situation worse? Share your views.

Comments

August 7, 2007 at 5:50 pm
(1) Fran Briggs says:

Great move as far as damage control for Intel. Using their blog to apologize literally has their target audience coming to them.

Nevertheless, I do believe it should have been followed with the traditional press release.

Fran Briggs
eMediaCampaigns
Director of Operations

January 16, 2008 at 4:14 pm
(2) Shelley says:

I looked at the ad and to be honest I would not have realized the men were sprinters had I not known, BUT I did not think the were bowing either. We are never going to get beyond this if people insist on trying to find the worst in everything. I think that there are people out there that spend all of thier time trying to find “evil” in everything just to keep things the way they are.

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