Sept. 30 saw the appearance in Gulf News’ Properties classified supplement of possibly the worst ad we’ve seen since our magazine started and we were forced to take an interest in such things.
You may have heard about it. It was for a company called Conqueror Real Estate. It carried the tagline “Conqueror! The world is yours!” And it featured a black-and-white portrait of Adolf Hitler. That’s Adolf. Hitler.
The ad (pictured, right) has no redeeming features. Aesthetically, it’s marginally less interesting than staring at your elbow. Which is surprising because – for all his little foibles – Hitler unquestionably had a sense of style.
As a statement about the brand’s aspirations, the choice of Hitler makes no sense at all. The company is called Conqueror. Hitler was a failure. He ended up blowing his own brains out, an act that still left him with three times the intelligence required to come up with this ad.
Cynical minds such as ours inevitably considered the possibility that the ad was designed to play on Hitler’s popularity in the Arab world, based mainly on his track record of killing Jews. Or, depending on how you look at it, out of sympathy for his status as a victim of the Holocaust “myth.” That’s not an angle that was explored in the local press’s reaction to the ad, however, where the most damning indictment of the little Austrian was that he was bent on world domination.
Nor is it a theory that David Dakak, general manager of Conqueror Real Estate, is willing to admit to. He claims the ad is designed purely to grab attention by using a famous person – and that the person’s character is irrelevant.
“Our target is to attract attention, whether they like the ad or not,” he says. “Business-wise, there’s no personal opinion. We don’t care if the person is bad or good. We’re using famous, known people.” It’s not the best approach to celebrity marketing.
Leaving aside the fact that the ad was ill thought-out and poorly executed, any idiot could have predicted that people were likely to be offended by it. Not least some of the UAE’s sizeable German community. Which raises the question: In a region where “causing offence” is apparently a risk to be avoided at all times – we’re thinking, for example, of the reaction in Lebanon to the Ogero ad [1] with the spoof presidential address or of UAE telco Du pulling its radio ad [2] featuring a man singing of his desire for fish and chips to the British national anthem – why did Gulf News run the advert? And are there any restrictions on who can be represented in ads in the paper?
It turns out there are. Posing as a new property developer, Dubai Cottagers, we called Gulf News to ask about advertising in the paper. We explained that we were considering using one of three images in our ad: Ted Bundy (convicted of raping and murdering more than 30 women in the US), Ariel Sharon (ex-Israeli Prime Minister, who had a stroke last year and is in a coma) and “a tasteful drawing of a woman, sort of Venus-De-Milo style, she’s topless.”
The sales rep told us Ted Bundy wouldn’t be a problem. He was less sure about Ariel Sharon, asking us to send in a picture of the ad so he could request approval. (We wonder if it was more likely to be approved if it was a picture of him in a coma, or upright and healthy.) Our Venus was a definite no-go though. “Not if she’s topless.”
Which gives a nice, concise picture of the hierarchy of offence. Genocidal dictator? Accepted. Rapist and serial killer? No worries. Right-wing Israeli leader? Could be an issue. Representation of the female form? What kind of sicko are you?