Peloton's holiday ad was mocked as dystopian — and a rival gin brand turned it into a joke

In December 2019, Peloton — the maker of expensive internet-connected exercise bikes, freshly public — released a holiday commercial called 'The Gift That Gives Back.' In it, a husband gives his wife a Peloton bike; over the year that follows, she films her fitness journey and thanks him, saying 'I didn't realize how much this would change me.' The company meant it as an uplifting story about transformation and gratitude.

The internet did not read it that way. Viewers widely mocked the ad as dystopian and sexist, reading it as a husband giving his wife an exercise machine because he was unhappy with how she looked. The backlash went viral, spawning parodies and think-pieces, and Peloton's stock fell in the days that followed (compounding jitters about the recently public company's valuation). Peloton defended the ad, saying it celebrated a 'fitness and wellness journey.'

The punchline landed hardest when Ryan Reynolds' Aviation American Gin hired Monica Ruiz, the actress who played the wife, for a follow-up ad in which her character drinks gin with friends and toasts her new freedom — a direct, winking parody of the Peloton spot. Peloton had paid to make an ad that a competitor turned into a joke at its expense. The episode became a textbook case of an advertisement whose intended message and its received message could not have been further apart.