In Germany, Edeka's Mother's Day commercial in particular caused red heads to turn
The German Advertising Council, the counterpart to the Swiss Fair Trading Commission, had to process 1,500 complaints in the first half of 2019. Half of them were related to the controversial Edeka Mother's Day commercial.
The Advertising Standards Council gives the German advertising industry a good report card and attests to its "high degree of responsibility and continued extraordinary willingness to cooperate". The 1524 complaints related to 357 advertising measures under review. There was nothing to complain about in 171 of them. The Advertising Council did not feel directly responsible for 119 cases. In the remaining 67 cases, 93 percent of the companies voluntarily agreed to stop or change the advertising in question (56 stops, 6 changes). This ultimately led to five public reprimands.
In Germany, significantly more complaints were submitted in the first half of the year than in the same period last year (+642). There was one main reason for this: the Edeka ad for Mother's Day, which caused outrage and red heads on social media (Werbewoche.ch reported)was responsible for half of all complaints received (over 750). The Advertising Council publicly reprimanded the ad, seeing it - despite all the irony - as discrimination against both women and men.
As in the previous year, "gender-discriminatory advertising" was the main reason for the protests. Within this category, there were 94 cases of sexist/degrading advertising, four cases of discrimination against men and 22 cases of discrimination against women. This category also includes stereotypical depictions, which the Advertising Standards Council classifies as discriminatory if the implication is that one gender is less valuable or incapable of certain activities. For example, after the Advertising Council intervened, a manufacturer of school satchels changed its advertising motif with "inquisitive boys" on the one side and "young ladies" on the other, who, according to the advertising text, were only concerned with outward appearances. In the modified advertising, boys and girls are addressed equally.
