The founder of a Dubai-based fitness firm said he had ditched his marketing team after the company spurred outraged by using images of a notorious Nazi concentration camp in advertising campaign.
The Circuit Factory was blasted by users on social media sites Twitter and Facebook after posting an image of the Auschwitz death camp with the slogan; ‘Kiss your calories goodbye.’
An estimated three million people were killed at the World War II concentration camp.
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The images were uploaded on the company’s Facebook page on Tuesday morning, but a number were later removed after a backlash erupted across social media sites. One user claimed to be "shocked@ the level of ignorance".
“Apologies for the insane poster campaign that was put up this morning... If it caused offense it was not our intention,” said Phil Parkinson, who runs the Al Quoz-based Circuit Factory.
“If it caused offense it was not our intention. I can't really do much more than apologise about this. I wish I could, but I can't.”
The company “won't be using the creative guy” behind the advertising campaign again, he said.
Marketing experts said the error could cost the company business following the wave of negative publicity that has followed the posting.
“Associating your brand with human suffering as a means to secure visibility is extremely short-sighted and may have far-reaching effects, including alienating both existing and potential customers,” said Eileen Wallis, managing partner at Dubai-based PR firm the Portsmouth Group.
Alexander McNabb, director of Spot On PR in Dubai and a founding member of the Middle East Public Relations Association (MEPRA), said it was a myth that all publicity was good publicity.
“In the online world you are talking to a global community so it is always possible to offend someone, somewhere. Using Auschwitz to promote weight loss, that is a most extraordinary lapse in judgement,” he said. “I would have thought that people would choose to stay away from a brand that behaves like this, especially if it did so consistently.”
The campaign comes weeks after a Virgin Megastores outlet in Qatar was forced to pull the Adolf Hitler's ‘Mein Kampf’ from its recommended reading shelf after a backlash on Twitter.
The retailer was blasted after a Twitter user posted a picture on the social network of the book in the store’s branch in Landmark Shopping Centre in Qatar.
Virgin Megastores said in a statement that individual stores chose the books promoted on recommended reading shelves, but said Mein Kampf had been removed from the section.
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