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Creativity Vs. Offence: Ogilvy & Mather’s Sleepless Nights Over Kurl-on
EXCERPTS
KURL-ON
Founded in 1962, Kurl-on was one of the largest producers of mattresses in India with factories located in five states in India. A part of the Manipal Group of Companies , Kurl-on pioneered the rubberized coir industry in India. The company’s products included mattresses, pillows, furniture, and other home decor. More bounce and less wear and tear was the Unique Selling Proposition of Kurl-on mattresses. Besides serving customers in India, the company also exported its products to West Asia, the UAE, the UK, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, southern and eastern Africa, and the South East and Far East countries. The company was headquartered in Bangalore. |
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MALALA YOUSAFZAI
Malala, a Pakistani student activist, was 14 years old when she was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen in October 2012 while she was on her way to attend school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Fortunately, she survived the horrific assault...
THE CONTROVERSIAL AD
O&M created the three ads as part of a proactive pitch for Kurl-on. The idea was to convey the message that a good night’s sleep on a spring mattress helped a person recover remarkably both mentally and physically from damage. Kurl-on wanted to highlight the ‘bounce’ attribute of its mattresses by portraying international celebrities and famous figures bouncing off a Kurl-on mattress to depict how they had bounced back from hard times.. O&M decided on three iconic figures who were globally acclaimed and were looked up to — Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi), Apple, Inc.’s founder Steve Jobs (Jobs), and Malala — for the three ad series. To add humor, the characters in the ads were depicted as cartoons. The ads were designed by Lamano Estudio (Lamano), a graphic design studio based in Chile...
THE BACKLASH
The ad featuring Malala went viral after it was uploaded on Ads of the World. The ad, which was reportedly not run in any paid media, spread like wildfire across the web. It drew flak from all quarters for its content, which was found to be offensive and in bad taste. O&M suddenly found itself vilified and at the receiving end of global outrage for the campaign...
THE APOLOGY
Faced with shrill criticism, O&M withdrew the ad from the Kyoorius Advertising & Design awards show even before it could be judged. Subsequently, the ad was pulled down from the Ads of the World website and Kurl-on decided against publishing or releasing it formally. According to Ramanan Subramani VP of O&M, “We are deliberating on the entire series of ads. Since it’s raising some eyebrows, we wanted to pull it back and maybe settle the commotion. Our intention was purely to see the positive side of Bouncing Back and definitely not the negative...
LOOKING AHEAD
Some experts felt that the whole fiasco had affected the brand image of O&M. Despite an apology by the company, some critics commented that the ad was the ultimate glorification of a human tragedy and that it was unethical on the part of O&M to use such an episode to sell a product. They said an apology was not the solution to such ads as it had hurt the sensibilities of Malala in particular and millions of people in general...
EXHIBITS
Exhibit I: The Kurl-on Ad featuring Malala Yousufzai
Exhibit II: The Kurl-on Ads featuring Mahatma Gandhi and Steve Jobs
