Ford India had apologized after posting sexy ads in the Laura Stampler’s report of Business Insider. In the campaign, former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi was shown with three girls being hand tied and mouth gagged, were drawn in the trunk of his Ford Figo.
To an extension, it was followed another couple of visuals where hotel heiress Paris Hilton was shown in place of Berlusconi with the kidnapped trios of kadarshains. And Lastly, Michael Schumacher was too in the similar posture along with his rivals namely Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton snuffed in the boot of Figo.
Not to worries, now Ford has removed those stuffs before it had created ruckus for them and had also sent an apologetic email which says, “We deeply regret this incident and agree with our agency partners that it should have never happened. The posters are contrary to the standards of professionalism and decency within Ford and our agency partners. Together with our partners, we are reviewing approval and oversight processes to help ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”
On an important note, such visuals were not ran for the paid advertisements and might be leaked due to some inefficiency from the staff of JWT, an Indian branch of the New York headquartered JWT who had been doing ad campaigns for Figo since 2009.
Basically, motif of the ad campaign was to “leave your worries behind” which seems that rather Ford had been sunk down deep in worries, instead of getting rid from some of it.
Rubbing off some from their shoulders as well, JWT too send a response for this nuisance which says, “We deeply regret the publishing of posters that were distasteful and contrary to the standards of professionalism and decency within WPP Group. These were never intended for paid publication and should never have been created, let alone uploaded to the internet. This was the result of individuals acting without proper oversight and appropriate actions have been taken within the agency where they work to deal with the situation.”
Figo was launched in India and is doing well inclusive of the recently received mid-life change in form of celebration avatar, hoping that such fuss may not disappoint its future sales figure.
One can check out those images that we have stored for our references.
