The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2008
Mars pulled Snickers' Mr T ad worldwide after it mocked a speed walker
A UK Snickers spot had Mr T sneer at a speed walker in tight shorts: 'You are a disgrace to the man race.' US complaints made Mars kill the campaign globally.
Mars · Snickers · 2008-07
What happened
On 13 July 2008 a new Snickers TV ad aired in Britain. Mr T — Laurence Tureaud, star of The A-Team — pulls up in a truck beside a speed walker in tight shorts and shouts: 'Speed walking. I pity you fool. You are a disgrace to the man race. It's time to run like a real man.' He then fires Snickers bars at the man until he sprints off. The spot was the second in a UK series built on 'You're not you when you're hungry', made by agency AMV BBDO.
The UK's Advertising Standards Authority received only two complaints, but a flood came from the United States. The Human Rights Campaign said the ad mocked a man's mannerisms and treated violence towards gay people as humorous; a US advertising trade publication also published an open letter directed at Omnicom, AMV BBDO's American parent company.
On 28 July 2008 — two weeks after first broadcast — Mars pulled the ad worldwide. A Mars spokesman said: 'However we understand that humour is highly subjective, and it is never our intention to cause offence. Accordingly, we have pulled the Mr T speed walker ad globally.' It was the same London agency whose Heinz Deli Mayo ad featuring two men kissing had been banned the previous month.
Why it happened
- The joke ran on a stock stereotype — a man whose manner is not 'manly' deserves mockery, and the punchline chased him with projectiles. Slapstick in one market reads as bullying in another.
- The campaign was one creative sold worldwide — Mars shipped the same spot into every market, so the loudest complaint anywhere ended the run everywhere, whatever British viewers thought.
- Two complaints at home were read as a green light — the regulator's silence did not protect the ad once a bigger audience abroad called it a slur.
The lesson
Mars's Mr T ad died on a global review: a joke about how a man walks tested fine in the UK and landed as a slur in the US. The audience that complains loudest sets the ad's price.
Aftermath
Mars confirmed the ad's positive reception in Britain did not outweigh the offence, ended the Mr T speed walker spot worldwide and removed it from its website. The ASA, which had received only two complaints, did not investigate. The Mr T series continued without the offending execution.
Sources
- Mr T Snickers ad pulled for being offensive to gay people — The Guardian
- Mr T's Snickers ad deemed offensive to homosexuals — The Telegraph
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