NZ sponsors pull ads from Californication
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
It’s ended its controversial run in Australia, but Californication has just started in New Zealand. And already it’s causing debate in the land of the long white cloud.
Cadbury, Flight Centre, Ferrit, Burger King, CRC and Finish have all asked their ads not be played during the show.
“We were unaware of the explicit nature of the programme,” said a Cadbury spokesperson, “which we do not support or endorse in any way. We have since instructed our agency to ensure that no Cadbury advertising takes place before, during or after the programme.”
A Flight Centre spokeswoman said the company had asked that, “it doesn’t happen again.” Asked why, she replied, “Feedback.”
The Ministry of Economic Development’s Buy NZ Made campaign has withdrawn its advertisements saying, “Our media booking schedule, prepared on 16 October, showed a booking with TV3 for a comedy programme at this time. The ministry has taken steps to ensure that it will not advertise in future during this programme and we have reinforced with our media buying agency our requirement to avoid advertising on programmes of this nature.”
Californication has been the target of a campaign by Family First lobbying. TV3 acknowledged it had received “a few dozen phone calls” complaining about the show. Ratings were up by 44,000 viewers in the same timeslot onweekly averages.
Source: Stuff
3 Responses
It’s not isolated to Australia, or even our companies. Microsoft was planning on offering same-sex benefits to its employees until right-wing religious groups threatened a boycott and they withdrew their plan.
Even here, SBS still refuses to show the South Park episode, Bloody Mary because some Catholics complained.
When will it end?
This comes as no surprise given the trans-Tasman nature of many of these fundamentalist religious nutter groups.
They’ve obviously been employing the tactic there that they used here – rallying their “godly troops” to be little complaint robots.
The fact that big advertisers like Cadbury has pulled ads from that spot in NZ makes me wonder what religious persuasion the head of the company is. After all, it’s a critically acclaimed drama that gets a ton of publicity, any advertiser would be crazy to say no to that.
As for the fundy chritians, I have one thing to reiterate to them: enjoy whatever blinkered fairytale you choose to believe in, but keep it to yourself.
Sounds to me like a great opportunity for advertisers that could not usually afford the time slot to get some great airtime during a well written fascinating programme albeit a little “risque”