LAVAL, Quebec -- Two women in lingerie walk through a field and stop at a tree, touching each other suggestively before kissing. The tree then magically starts talking and tries to seduce the women. Perv! one woman yells. They start chopping the tree with axes. Soon, an orange-colored liquid starts spurting from the cracks. The rest is probably best left to the imagination.
The controversial video was among 19 short clips produced and posted online by Mac's Convenience Stores in Canada to promote a new Froster slush-drink flavor. The company has pulled [image-nocss] nine of the videos after consumers and employees complained, reported the CanWest News Service.
People were not comfortable with some of the contents, so we were sensitive to that, Mac's marketing manager Russ Sunderji told the news agency.
The campaign is known as viral marketing, which hopes to use existing social networkssuch as YouTube and blogsto spread its message.
The target audience responded well to the ads, Sunderji said. At 16, nothing is too raw or edgy. If you look at pop culture today, from music videos to video games, this is the world they live in. We needed an aggressive campaign that spoke to them in their language.
He added, It's a highly sought after demographic that we're going after, and it's a fiercely competitive marketplace, so we needed an aggressive campaign.
The ad campaign began rolling out online at the start of summer. Five directors oversaw the videos and were given "complete poetic license" in filming the clips, Sunderji said.
This is Mac's first viral marketing campaign, which it hopes will spread the brand name via Internet users. Even though Mac's has stopped sponsoring the nine videos, some have been reposted online. "It's the nature of the online world. It's a risk you take when you use the medium in the online world. You have no control over what people do with your ads," Sunderji said, adding that they can't tell others to take down their videos.
He declined to reveal the advertising campaign cost.
The chain also drew criticism earlier this year for another advertising campaign, this time nonviral, for the Froster. Posters in Mac's windows featured a nun kneeling with her arms raised and a sheep at her side. Above the nun was a shining Froster with the initials WTF below.
WTF is generally considered to stand for what the f***; however, store owners have told customers that it is supposed to stand for What the Flavor.The small-sized Froster referred to as a WTF is accompanied by the medium-sized OMGWTF, and the large-sized RUNTSOMGWTF. According to NetLingo.com, OMG stands for Oh My God and RUNTS stands for Are You Nuts.
Mac's is a brand of Laval, Quebec-based Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc.
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