Death threats aimed at F*ck the Cupcakes staff as vile comments surface on trade media
Staff at advertising agency Innocean have received personal death threats following a campaign in the lead-up to International Women’s Day.
Staff at Innocean, the agency that created the campaign for Fck The Cupcakes, which asked men to ‘show up’ for International Women’s Day, have received a barrage of threats. CEO of Innocean, Jasmin Bedir, has also received direct death threats to her personal email, following the campaign.
The comments section on trade forum Campaign Brief has also carried a significant number of vile comments about the campaign, which Bedir pointed out to Mumbrella.
Shocking if there really have been ‘death threats’ as a result of this campaign. However this Mumbrella article prompted me to go and read the comments thread on Campaign Brief and I can’t see any of the ‘vile comments’ referenced here. Or any threats of any kind.
Perhaps they’ve now been removed. However the comment count now stands at higher than the 87 mentioned above and while I can see how some of the more critical comments may be ‘distasteful’ and possibly even offensive to the creators of this campaign, they are merely expressing a contrary opinion and many of them reasonably articulately so. The language itself is no worse than that in the name of yr his organisation “Fck The Cupcakes”. And in fact the most offensive part of all of this IMHO is the ‘di**ck pic’ posters that are a part of this campaign (and which I note even Mumbrella has chosen not to publish in this story) which are genuinely offensive. Yes I know ‘shock tactics’ can be a powerful creative force, but I question the merit of their application for such an important message. They demean the entire campaign, not to mention the very audience they’re supposed to be addressing.
I hope this comment is published by Mumbrella as I think this is all a vitally important discussion. But just because “Fck The Cupcakes” are taking the initiative on this topic doesn’t make them immune from criticism of their work or their messaginf, both of which it seems could benefit from a more considered, mature and inclusive approach.
While death threats are never okay, I just had a read through the comments on the post – they’re actually quite reasonable and articulate. I didn’t see anything that would be any more deserving of being called ‘vile’ than the content of the campaign itself.
Pretty weak response from ACA… if your members getting death threats isn’t something your prepared to take a position on what value are you adding?
Instead here’s a generic statement we prepared earlier.
What is old is new again it seems. I was writing about this stuff more than a decade ago.
I’m long gone from the industry and it still hasn’t grown up.
One day, someone will get sued – or worse.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/nameless-blogger-bile-hurts/news-story/8460be0b1c90fcb7fc4febdde5770fb8
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/adlands-had-enough-of-the-blogs/news-story/b0d733aeb1dfccf857bce7d288eeb8ef
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/call-to-end-anonymity-in-a-bid-to-expose-online-ad-abuse/news-story/ef2c957d726b70780f0022ab898463d0
I agree Simon.
Surely it’s possible to trace IP addresses and get after these people?
Maybe it suits the CB owners’/other media outlets’ interests not to hold anon posters accountable for threatening/abusive comments but it’s pretty f*cked and it feels like it’s not gonna change til some lunatic follows through on their threats