There must be something in the air this week, because it is a free-for-all of bad publicity and businesses shooting themselves in the foot. First there was the Anthony Bourdain/Budacki’s debacle, and don’t even get us started on Chick-Fil-A COO Dan Cathy’s same-sex marriage blunder yesterday (although at least the company had the wherewithal to release a recanting statement this morning and now we know how to make our own Chick-Fil-A sandwich at home anyway). Today it’s Nestlé brand Kit Kat making apologies, after a new campaign to show off their internet savvy with Instagram just ended up proving just how internet un-savvy they really were.
Yesterday Kit Kat posted an Instagram photo of a brown bear at a drum kit, with a caption reading: “Drum roll please… Kit Kat is on Instagram.” That should have been it, just a cute ursine announcement that Kit Kat would now be able to communicate with its fans on another form of social media. But in less than a day, the brand had to take the picture down. Why? Because those fans started noticing the stark similarities between the Kit Kat bear and Pedobear. Oh dear.
For the uninitiated, Pedobear first popped up in the murky depths of internet message board and meme birthing site 4chan. Yes, the name is a portmanteau of “pedophile” and “bear,” and as such he is a creeper pedophile and also a bear. Certainly not the kind of bear you would trust with your children, unlike Paddington or Winnie the Pooh. Also not the kind of bear you want associated with your delicious wafer chocolate bars.
According to Australian news source The Age, who got in contact with Nestlé’s Australia and New Zealand division, the whole thing is one big misunderstanding due to spending too much time working on ads and not enough time looking at memes on the internet:
“We produced this photo – of a real guy in a bear suit - to launch Instagram through our Facebook community,” a spokeswoman for the company said. “The picture is not Pedobear.”
“We had never heard of Pedobear,” she said. “But when the possibility of its similarity to the so-called 'Pedobear' was raised with us, we immediately removed it.”
The assertion that no, this is not Pedobear, is almost hilarious in its earnest nature because of course we know it’s not meant to be Pedobear, what business in its right mind would knowingly associate itself with Pedobear? We’re just incredulous that no one at any point along the way, from buying the bear suit to snapping the picture, saw the similarity. When you’ve been immersed in the internet for as long as we have, it can be hard to even fathom that someone hasn’t heard of a widespread internet meme. But we’re sure it happens a lot more than we think, and this is just one example. Luckily for Kit Kat, it’s just a misunderstanding and not a more egregious faux pas. Besides, the fact that it was a social media ad means that it cost the brand nothing except for a little dignity. It could have been worse.
[SOURCE: The Age via Gawker; Know Your Meme]
