A Canadian running magazine called Canadian Running is learning a very important lesson this week: Don’t run stupid ads that offend dog lovers, because they will cut you.
Well, really they’ll just post exactly how they feel about your stupid ad on your magazine’s Facebook page, causing you all sorts of grief until you’re forced to pull the ad and publicly apologize.
The ad itself is exceedingly dumb. Shoe company Pearl Izumi believes its new shoes are so great, and the shoes provide such excellent support and function, that your dog could die by trying to keep up with you. Ha ha. No, sorry, that’s not funny at all.
The picture the company ran is a bad, terrible one, featuring a runner performing CPR on his collapsed dog who had tried to keep up with him and his Pearl Izumi shoes but failed. It appeared in a full page ad in the September/October issue. Look at it:
What the hell was Pearl Izumi and Canadian Running thinking? Readers were quick to respond, blanketing Canadian Running’s Facebook page with outraged comments. They’re all worth reading. Here are some excerpts:
Burning every one of my CR magazines. Apology not accepted.
I am disgusted with you for having anything to do with this ad or the companies behind it.
How dare you imply that it is okay to run an animal to death?
I find your recent ad of the Yellow Lab ‘stopping’ before his owner did morally reprehensible.
Will never be buying your magazine or the product it advertised in your hideous ad portraying the collapsed dog. How dare you imply that it is okay to run an animal to death?
I’m saddened that as a magazine you would run such a distasteful ad depicting a dog dying just to sell some shoes.
I am astounded that an ad person would propose such a concept, and even more so that not one person had the intelligence and compassion to see that this ad was way beyond mere bad taste.
Your choice to run this ad is in very poor taste in my humble opinion. What’s next…. pushing grandmothers off cliffs?
The problem with that Pearl Izumi ad is that there are plenty of people, including runners, who are not very bright and will think nothing of dragging their dog along for a run that is longer than is healthy for the dog.
You could probably add a few of your own, you know, if you wanted to.
Here’s the issue the ad appeared in:
After a few days, Canadian Running finally chimed in with an apology. Here’s what it posted
“We agree that this ad was indeed done in poor taste and regret running it. We at Canadian Running are of course dog lovers, as evidenced by the many articles that we have published in the past about running safely and successfully with your dog. We apologize to any of our readers who found the ad upsetting. This ad will not be run in future issues of our magazine. We have brought this to the attention of Pearl Izumi.”
Pearl Izumi also apologized on its Facebook page, saying that it deleted the ad and removed it from all future publications. It also said that many at the company are dog owners, and “we want you to know we would never, ever do anything to harm an animal.”
Aside from posting a ridiculous ad about harming an animal because you have rad shoes.
Pearl Izumi also posted a video on YouTube in conjunction with the ad, demonstrating how to perform CPR on a dog should you try to run him to death. It has since been removed.
Via Mashable
