Gold Coast eyewear company apologises for using images of World War II death camp in campaign

July 4, 2018 10:22

Gold Coast company Valley Eyewear has taken down a video campaign featuring World War II monuments after complaints about using symbols of suffering for marketing purposes.

The campaign was shot by the company’s founder, Michael Crawley, and an associate during an Eastern European tour last year and featured models walking across the memorials wearing its Black Rain sunglass range.

The video attracted criticism from people around the world who called out the insensitivity of using holocaust memorials in the marketing campaign. Those images have been taken down, along with the company’s Twitter account, and replaced with images from a World War II partisan monument.

Paul Wallbank

Paul Wallbank was news editor at Mumbrella between June 2017 and June 2019. Previously he's covered business and technology issues for outlets ranging from The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald to the ABC and Business Spectator.

Topics

Michael Crawley Valley Eyewear

2 COMMENTS

John 4 Jul 18

Get your facts correct! It was Serbs and Jews that complained as they were the victims! Also it is a former Yugoslavian WWII momument not a Croatian one. Simply because the region is now Croatian does not make the monument Croatian! Croats would not complain as they were the perpetrators of this and refuse to recognise what happened in WWII. Poor and ill researched journalism!

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Vivienne Kelly 4 Jul 18

Hi John,

Apologies for the confusion here.

I have tidied up the wording.

Thanks,
Vivienne – Mumbrella