A wise woman once said: “There is no such thing as bad publicity: ALL publicity is good publicity.”
H&M is the latest retailer to use creative advertising gimmicks to drive traffic to their online store.
H&M came under fire over the weekend for using a black boy model to advertise a “coolest monkey in the jungle” hoodie. The advertisement appeared on H&M’s UK website.
Many outraged Twitter users who don’t even shop at H&M threatened to boycott their stores.
But, in the end, H&M got what they wanted: tons of press and more traffic to their websites in Europe and in the U.S.
H&M, which is based in Sweden, apologized and removed the advertisement on Sunday.
“This image has now been removed from all H&M channels and we apologise to anyone this may have offended,” the company told the NY Daily News.
Two other hoodies from the same company featured white boy models, including one labeled a jungle “survival expert.”
Racism in advertising as PR stunts has worked well in the past for other corporations, including Dove Soap, whose ad featuring a black woman turning white sparked outrage — and drove more traffic to the website.
