Two Major Brands are Ruffling Feathers with their Holiday Ads
Bells, sugar cookies, and holiday ads are the new telltale signs that tell everyone, “Hey, it’s December!”
Another thing that’s recently become a popular December trend? Holiday ad controversy.
A recent holiday ad by Apple has caused quite a stir. No, not the heartwrenching one where the kids give an iPad to their grandpa with pictures of their late grandma.
The controversial ad depicts a family of four on a road trip and the parents giving their children iPads whenever they are being rambunctious. The main issue people have with this is the fact that the parents are distracting their kids with a tablet, a common parenting technique as of late.
Another commercial that has gotten a lot of kickback this year is one from Peloton, a luxury fitness company.
Peloton’s holiday ad featured a husband who bought his wife a Peloton stationary bike for Christmas. After receiving the bike, the wife made a video of herself using it every day for a year to express gratitude for the journey she endured with the bike.
The problem people are having with this commercial is: they picked an extremely thin actress to go on this fitness journey, the wife looked nervous or scared during different parts of the ad, and finally, that a husband would get his wife an exercise bike as a gift.
Peloton has defended the ad saying, “While we’re disappointed in how some have misinterpreted this commercial, we are encouraged by—and grateful for—the outpouring of support we’ve received from those who understand what we were trying to communicate” according to Fortune.
Whatever your thoughts or opinions are on these ads, you can’t deny the financial consequences. There aren’t any updates on if Apple has been impacted by this controversy but, Peloton lost $942 million in stock value according to Business Insider.
Although, not everyone is hurting from this Peloton ad.
Aviation American Gin, an alcohol brand that’s partly owned by Ryan Reynolds, used the controversy to their advantage when they released an ad that featured the wife from the Peloton ad. The ad showed the Peloton wife sitting at a bar with her friends who were consoling her after it seemed like something terrible just happened to her (or to her relationship?).
No matter what you think of these commercials, I think most can agree that these two giant brands are not in for such a happy holiday this year.
