Channels  Pepper spray ad causes a furore By: Agencies September 22, 2005 New Delhi: The pepper spray company, which had created a furore by releasing a controversial advertisement of its product, yesterday withdrew the commercial. The print advertisement had women fuming as it suggested that a woman was asking to be raped if she did not carry the product. The ad, which was featured in a national daily on Tuesday said: Tomorrow if your daughter is raped, who is to be blamed? The rapist or you?" Social activists felt this degraded women by shifting the blame of rape to the parents of the victim instead of the criminal. I apologise for hurting the sentiments and we have decided to withdraw the advertisement, said R A Ghai, President, Unisafe Technologies. While several questions about the ethics of advertising have been raised, it has led the agency that created the ad to now rethink its advertising strategy for the product. Its assumed that no one looks at ads, but clearly this uproar is a sign for the ad industry that you cannot just write anything and get away with it, especially if it hurts the sentiments of people.  Email this article  Print this article  Post / View comments | 
