Today on Facebook, I stumbled upon a distasteful breach of persuasive ethics. I'll admit that it seems to have worked as I stopped scrolling and was thrown off by the mashup advertisement of TGI Fridays and Ashley Madison (A website where married men are paired up with girls in hopes of cheating on their wives). The website that is being satired is disgusting in its own right, but it seems that there is an entire marketing campaign taking anti-femenist pop culture references and replacing women with food. TGI Fridays seems to have taken a boardroom joke too far and made it into reality to the point where there is even a website and domain name dedicated to "dating profiles" for their overpriced frozen food appetizers.
Ashley Madison, for a little backstory, is a "hookup website" for married men who want to cheat on their wives. Their tagline is "life is short, have an affair". Recently, the website was hacked and all of the emails used to sign up for this website were leaked. Among many emails, there were a few interesting people of power that seemed to be members including legislators, members of the church, and military officials. There were several instances of divorce and suicide following the leak as it ruined many people's lives, while their secret was revealed.
This breach of ethics is playing upon the collapse of a cheating website, and using infidelity towards ordering appetizers at TGI Fridays. I am not sure where the correlation comes into play, but I am not hungry enough to find out.
Upon further research, whoever's idea that objectifying food, not women is a message that TGI Fridays needs to get behind there seems to be more to this disgusting campaign.
A lot of people will remember a video posted last year of a KU alumni walking through the streets of New York City wearing a tee shirt and jeans getting catcalled 108 times. The video was a strong statement of what women go through on a daily basis and put a strong spin on ending catcalling culture. TGI Friday's, however, decided to turn this message into a "Nobody likes a catcaller, but who can blame somebody for #appcalling?" message. Not only does this take away the original message of the video, but washes the message away into a pop cultural reference. This violates ethical standards by making fun of a truly important message in order to sell mediocre product.
I am not the only person that feels this way. Time Magazine did a story on the impact of this campaign and the viral outcry against it. People are taking to Facebook and social media to call TGI Fridays out for a poorly construed message.
The responses are all cookie-cutter as well as lacking. "While we may make light of objectifying apps, we do not condone adultery." By ethical standards, this is a complete lack of disrespect for the sensitivities of the consumer (or former consumer).
"The promiscuity of appetizers, not people" shows as well that their food and service has declined to a point where the hopes that sex sells is their last resort. People are taking notice, though. Look on their facebook page. Almost every comment is regarding poor service or poor food. It's no wonder TGI Fridays is turning to such desperate measures to sell overpriced frozen garbage.
I had not seen this before - and it's pretty shocking! While there may be some sophomoric humor here, the context of this "campaign" is really unexpected coming from a place like TGIFriday's. The backlash you describe, however, also indicates attention - and so I'd be curious whether this very "forward" campaign hurts Friday's or becomes just another ad campaign.
ReplyDeleteI would also be curious about the ad agency responsible for this campaign. Ads which blow up social media are valuable - unless they result in an overwhelming backlash. If the backlash wanes without hurting profits, the company will call this a successful campaign.
As usual, great passion here. Consider, however, that the way you describe TGIFriday's would clearly indicate that you are not among their target audience. If this becomes successful, it would tell us as much about Friday's consumers as about their ads. Good stuff! (Don't miss any more deadlines, please)