‘This is hate, pure and simple’: Muslim pork ad pulled from awards
The Drum has removed a finalist from its Chip Shop Awards after it was called out for using the tagline: “Make a Muslim eat pork”.
The full poster said “Make a Muslim eat pork” with an image of a skerrick of meat remaining on a plate. The brand tagline “Or start using Finish” was in smaller text at the bottom of the poster.
The creative appeared to be advertising Finish dishwasher tablets, but Finish and its parent company Reckitt were not involved in the creative. Instead, it was communications students who had submitted the creative into the category Best Idea (Rejected by a Client).
The idea of the Chip Shop Awards, according to The Drum, is to celebrate “raw, unfiltered creativity”.
What an overreaction. The intent of the ad is clearly about respecting other people’s dietary requirements.
This doesn’t look like hate to me. The message is about the importance of taking care with the food you offer your guests. Not because you hate them, but because you value them.
Yes, clumsily delivered, but they are students. There’s definitely a lesson there about understanding your audiences and recognising that humour doesn’t always land the way you intended, and of course this ad would never fly in the ‘real world’ but hate? No.
They should have picked on the vegans…
Regardless of if there is context cropped out of it, this ad would have worked better by removing the religious angle. No one would serve food to their friends and family off dirty plates. You can play up the ridiculousness of that situation without spotlighting someone’s faith – “The taste of this steak is so interesting, almost like lasagna” (showing a steak on a plate with visible pasta stains around it). You can workshop the joke from there but I think that’s already better than the confusing mess they came up with…
You mean people on LinkedIn are thumping a table with an outraged opinion about molehills? Surely not.
Next you’ll tell me the post was structured like a short story with an attention grabbing line above the fold and a vague job title promising to make customers really think or qualified leads.
Calling this hate is massively overstating it. The real problem here is if we keep lowering the bar on what we get outraged over, then everything will wind up being an outrage.