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.
Peloton's ad was mocked as dystopian and sexist, and its stock fell; a rival gin brand turned it into a joke by hiring the actress for a parody.
The ad framed a woman's body and fitness as a gift her husband wanted to improve, a subtext the audience picked up on instantly and rejected.
Peloton read its own ad as aspirational and missed how it would land in a culture sensitive to such messaging about women's bodies.
The backlash went viral because the ad was a perfect, shareable example of tone-deaf advertising.
A competitor (Aviation Gin) capitalized on the misstep in real time, turning Peloton's spending into a rival's marketing win.
An ad reflects the brand's view of its customer back at them. Peloton framed a wife's body as a gift her husband wanted to improve, and the internet read it instantly. Know what your story implies.
Peloton's holiday ad is taught as a case study in how an advertisement's intended meaning and its received meaning can diverge catastrophically, and how quickly a misstep can be amplified (and exploited by competitors) in the social-media era. Peloton survived and the bike remained popular, but the ad became a permanent reference point for tone-deaf marketing. The lesson for marketers: an ad is a statement about how you see your customer, and the audience will read that statement whether you meant it or not — so know exactly what your story implies before you spend millions to broadcast it.
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