Sex Pistols are reuniting for a one-off on 11/8, just in time to ride the tide of the latest public controversy they’ve managed to set off. Bell Canada tried to appeal to Canadian youth with an edgy archival image incorporating some Pistols paraphernalia, and wound up offending Holocaust survivors all over the country.
Via Reuters:
Canada’s biggest phone company has apologized after a punk-rock reference to the Holocaust appeared on billboard advertisements for its cell phones.The ads for Bell Canada’s (BCE.TO) Solo discount service showed a young woman decked out in flashy punk rock attire, with a button that reads “Belsen was a gas” — the controversial title of a song by the Sex Pistols, and a reference to Nazi Germany’s Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
“It was inadvertent,” Bell Canada spokesman Mark Langton said on Friday, noting that the dozen ads were taken down as soon as the company realized its mistake. “Obviously, we would never depict such an offensive slogan in our advertising.”
He said Bell officials approved the ads after examining sample images that were smaller than the final billboards. The button inscription could only be read when the ads were blown up to their full size, he said.
Yikes. Advertising execs overlook small details like that all the time when choosing to invoke rock cred. Like how’s about when Pepsi used the Stones’ “Brown Sugar” in their campaign from 2003? Great idea — the cola’s brown ‘n’ sweet, just like the song’s title, right? Except, according to AllMusicGuide, Jagger wrote the tune about “a pastiche of a number of taboo subjects, including interracial sex, cunnilingus, slave rape, and less distinctly, sadomasochism, lost virginity, and heroin use.” Any other similarly unfortunate rock-related slogans come to mind?
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Doesn’t really apply, but there was that time that a bank used “Young Americans” by David Bowie as their theme. Ha ha.
No really an AD, but Reagan using “Born in the USA” for his campaign song?
T-Mobile, you’ve got nothing left to lose. please make an ad featuring SoD’s “Speak English or Die”.
I always get a kick out of the cruise ship commercial that uses Iggy’s “Lust For Life”– funny that they would make use of a song with the classic line “Of course I’ve had it in the ear before…” Guess those cruise ships are more fun than I imagined…
Wrangler using CCR’s Fortunate Son to sell jeans to red staters
I remember seeing an ad for Radio Shack years ago that used Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” as background music for a Father’s Day sale.
I love that some ad exec put the Pogues’ “The Sunny Side of the Street” in a Cadillac commercial. It’s pretty funny that they use the verse with the lines “I saw that train and I got on it, with a heart full of hate and a lust for vomit…” It would be even funnier if they’d used the one with the lines “As my mother wept, it was then I swore to take my life as I would a whore…” Probably the first time that McGowan’s mumbles and rasps worked in their favor, commercially speaking, since I have to assume the Cadillac folks had no idea what he was saying when they agreed to use it.
Chevy trucks using John Mellencamp’s song “This Is Our Country” is a good example of a group of people embracing a song that is going completely over their heads. Of course, to verify this would require you to go listen to the song, and who the hell wants to do that anymore? But really, it’s a lot like “Born In the USA” or “Rockin’ In the Free World” in that the idea and message behind the lyrics is completely different that what people who just hear the chorus and immediately get all misty eyed and patriotic think it is. With that said, man fuck that commercial.
I don’t know if anyone else caught this, but I thought that Chase Bank using “All You Need is Love” to shill for credit cards was appalling. It basically subverted Lennon’s “Love song to God” and made it infer that all you really need is money.
Just another reason to seek justice on Michael Jackson.
There was an ad some time ago that featured The Turtles “Happy Together” that had this pensioner painting another woman’s name on a boat, but then he glanced behind and saw his wife walking up to him so he painted over the other woman’s name. It was a curious mix of lyrics and inference. Oh, and adultery (possibly).
@Nello
Was it a commercial for paint?
Those friggin’ “Viva Viagra” song really tugs at my short hairs, arrrrr!