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Pure Blonde blocks ‘offensive’ comments beneath River of Blonde ad on YouTube

Pure Blonde adPure Blonde has blocked comments from running beneath an ad it posted on YouTube earlier today, saying that some of the comments used offensive language.

The ad was part of a campaign, created by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, to define a “Pure Blonde moment” for the Carlton United Breweries-owned beer brand.

Andy Meldrum, general marketing manager for Pure Blonde told Mumbrella: “Since the ad went live we received a couple comments that contained offensive language, so we made the decision to remove this functionality temporarily. In light of the ASB ruling on VB and social media last year we won’t cop offensive or inappropriate sentiment on our channels.”

The Advertising Standards Bureau ruled that Victoria Bitter was responsible for comments on its Facebook page last year, some of which were deemed sexist, racist and homophobic.

However, Meldrum has said that comments would be allowed to run on Pure Blonde’s Facebook page, where the ad has also been posted. At the time of writing the ad had only received a handful of comments, all of them positive.

The ad has already attracted a number of comments on Mumbrella, some posters criticising the ad for seeming to imply that a large group of white people represents purity.

One post read:

Did nobody consider the racial implications ramifications of this ad? The intent is irrelevant and the fact that the beer has blonde in its name is irrelevant, it’s irresponsible to represent “purity” with a hoard of just white people. Like wow, straya

CUB responded to these criticisms by saying that using blonde-haired people in its ad simply “made sense” given the nature of the product.

Meldrum said: “We have a history of using blonde people in our imagery since we first launched, representing the brand, name and style as you’d expect – with blondes. The people in our ad filling the city streets represent the flow of Pure Blonde beer and as the liquid is golden in colour the use of people with fair coloured hair and light coloured clothing made sense.

On how CUB would manage comments on its Facebook page, Meldrum told Mumbrella: “We will respond on Facebook to our fans and moderate as we always do, keeping in mind that not  everyone will like the ad, but that offensive sentiment is not on. We look forward to further feedback from our Facebook audience once they see the ad for themselves.”

Robin Hicks

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