Monday, November 30, 2009

Bad PR For Macs

Been a couple of PR nightmares pop up for Apple lately.

First there's the unwanted photo of Bigot Harry Jackson using one of their computers to read his speech hating on the DC marriage issue during the pubic commentary phase.

But at the same time, Apple can't help the fact the bigots like their computing products, too

Then this old Mac ad touting their iMovie software resurfaced on YouTube in late September and caused some drama as well.



Model Gisele Bundchen in this ad is supposed to be the embodiment of a home movie made using iMovie. After the Mac presents Gisele, the PC presents a person wearing a dress identical to Gisele’s, in a wig, with no breasts, five o’clock shadow and an abundance of exposed chest hair.

The ad ends with the line: “Work in progress?”

Apple is a company that prides itself on its progressive politics, and many of the people that own Macs are GLBT community members. The last thing they want is ruffled feathers with an important segment of the marketing base.

According to GLAAD, they contacted Apple about the trans stereotype filled ad, and they stated they haven't run this since 2006.

But it did add up to a couple of PR headaches for Apple amongst its GLBT clients.

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