"We are not men... we are not an advertising agency"

Remember that horrible "manly" Turkish shampoo ad with Hitler in it?

Employees of a Turkish ad agency sure do. And they hate what it has done to the reputation of their country, and their industry.

So they decided to do what any red-blooded Turkish men would do to fight back: they got in drag.

Adland reports that Farkyeri issued this statement:

“We are not men… 

We, as a local advertising agency in Turkey, hereby condemn the unfortunate commercial produced in March 2012 by an advertising agency from our country for a shampoo brand in our country by using the images of a speech delivered by Adolf Hitler. 

From a humanistic perspective, it is shameful to use as a commercial material the tragedy of a genocide that caused the death of millions of innocent people and an international problem of gender apartheid which results in oppression and killing of millions of people. In terms of creativeness, it is simply cheapness and taking the easy way out. We are first human and then advertising agency. We never accept any concession on our humanity for the work we do. We refer those who carried out this cheapness to the conscience of the public. We believe that the advertisers and consumers in our country will give them the best answer. 

The belief of any publicity is good publicity can be argued, but there is no question about the good and bad people. This is clearly an attempt to make a commercial profit on the grief of millions of people. This is a shameful human weakness. And this is unfortunately done by an advertising agency in this country. 

As a matter of fact, if manhood is racism and gender apartheid… if it is to use grief of millions of oppressed and massacred innocent people as a commercial material, we are not men! If those who prepared this are advertiser and if this is called advertising, we are not an advertising agency! 

Farkyeri"

The above image is also the landing page of their web site.

And now there's a video, too:



Wonderful way to self-promote while making a real statement. (Coincidentally, the season opener of Mad Men had Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce do something remarkably similar, but against Y&R's racism.)

Hitler employed as shampoo pitchman

A bizarre story from The Drum. This Turkish shampoo brand has decided not only to be unforgivably sexist, but to Godwin up their ad as well:

"Beneath the images of the Nazi leader the firm typed the message 'If you are not wearing a woman’s dress, you should not use her shampoo either.' 

The piece then concludes: 'Here it is, a real men’s shampoo, Biomen.'"

So, Hitler is a "real man"?

Turkey was neutral for most of the Second World War, sheltering Jewish refugees from Europe.

Abraham H. Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League's National Director, issued this statement:

“This video is just the latest example of the use of Holocaust imagery in some countries to sell commercial products, which has contributed to the trivialization of and desensitization to the unparalleled horrors of the Holocaust. There can never be any justifiable purpose for using the images of Hitler, Nazis or any other depiction of the Nazi killing machine to sell products or services.”

Of course we've seen the Nazi leader in ads before. But usually as a symbol of evil, not as a "macho" pitchman.

F'd Ad Fridays: "Disgusting" is not a very good brand association

Yeah, haha. Clever Photoshop work. But what happens when people run away from your pilates ads, while choking back hot vomit, before they get a chance to read the call-to-action?

Via Ads of The World