An Israeli company recently put together an ad campaign for Bacardi that is one of the offensive and hateful ad campaigns I have seen. I’ve come across quite a few misogynistic alcohol ads before, but this one really takes it to a whole new level.

Here is the response that was posted on the Women’s Media Center blog from “Bacardi”:

Thank you for taking the time to post your story regarding Bacardi Breezer.

The campaign you are referring to ran in 2008 for two months in Israel. Even though Bacardi Breezer is not sold or distributed in the United States, we immediately notified the appropriate Bacardi affiliate and had this website shut down.

Bacardi proudly celebrates diversity and we do not endorse the views of this site. We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this site and thank you for bringing it to our attention.

I did a bit of research to make sure it wasn’t bogus. It appears to be a form letter response from Bacardi to those who have complained about the ad — the same stock response from Bacardi is referred to on another blog about this ad campaign as well. (I couldn’t find anything on the Bacardi web site itself, however.)

In my opinion, it’s a first step, but not enough. I think they need to explain how this ad got produced in the first place. Explaining it away as a decision by some rogue affiliate is not enough. It was using the Bacardi name and advertising a Bacardi product, so Bacardi needs to show that they have taken steps to make sure that these kinds of ads do appear again.

However, given that another Bacardi ad has a of a woman’s half-naked back with a Bacardi tattoo stamped just above her ass, I wouldn’t count on that happening.

No more Bacardi for me.

UPDATE: It appears that Bacardi is getting a lot of flak over this — a lot of blogs and discussion groups have been talking about this for the last few days. Bacardi has since revised their response, which they have been posting in the comments section on several blogs in response to the controversy:

We wish to thank all of you who have written us about a past promotional campaign for Bacardi Breezer.

As a Company and as individuals we are also angered and dismayed that such a campaign was ever created and we have taken immediate action to stop it as it violated our stringent global marketing principles that we firmly support.

By way of explanation, but by no means an excuse, Bacardi never sponsored nor developed this promotion. But we understand it is our brand and our reputation and you are our consumers. We are also embarrassed that we didn’t catch this breach sooner. We have been urgently looking into this matter to make sure this type of activity is never repeated.

What we do know is that a third-party developed and activated this brief campaign in one small market more than a year ago without our clearance. When we discovered this promotion, we instructed our distributor to shut it down as it did not comply with our global marketing standards. We are now urgently looking into the reasons why this program was recently reposted on the internet. In markets where Bacardi does not have a corporate presence, we are represented by third parties; in this case a distributor and its advertising agency, but they must adhere to our stringent marketing principles, which clearly this campaign did not.

When Bacardi found out about this recent reposting, we immediately notified the agency and distributor to shutdown the website.

Bacardi proudly celebrates diversity and we do not endorse the views of this site or the campaign, as it is offensive and completely inappropriate. We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this campaign and thank you, our consumers for bringing it to our attention.

Sincerely,

Bacardi Limited

This explanation is certainly better than their first attempt. I think they have realized that this is doing serious damage to their brand.

What’s interesting is that the publicist for Bacardi, Sean-Patrick Hillman, wrote a tweet on Twitter (which has since been removed): “Ah, crisis communication on a Sunday… why can’t people get a brain… or at least use the one they were born with?” Hopefully the brainless people he refers to would be those at McCann Digital.

By the way, for those of you on Twitter who want to contact McCann Digital on Twitter to express how you feel about their ad campaign — and the fact that they were so proud of it that they submitted it to a festival in Cannes — they can be reached at @McCann_Israel , or you can contact their associates directly: @alonbrenner @shaygoren @Refuah @Yuval32 @vivi6 @shaialmagor @Meravkan