IT company forced to apologise and pull its advertising campaign after its wombat logo was mistaken for a PIG by Muslims
An adorable wombat mascot has been mistaken for a pig by offended Malaysian locals whose protests have led an Australian company to abandon their advertisement.
Servcorp, a company that sells serviced office spaces and provides IT services, was forced to apologise and explain what a wombat was on its Facebook page after Muslims participating in Ramadan complained about the imagery.
'Servcorp would like to extend its sincerest apologies for any confusion caused due to the use of a Wombat in a recent digital advertisement in Kuala Lumpur,' the company's post read.
'Servcorp is an Australian company and uses the Wombat as its company mascot - the wombat itself is a small furry bear like animal that belongs to the Koala Bear family and is native to Australia - It would seem that some people mistook the wombat for a pig and during the holy month of Ramadan this might lead to some sensitivities.
'As an international business it is not Servcorp's intention to offend any race nor religion and indeed, there have been no prior issues globally with the use of our mascot inclusive of Servcorp's many Middle Eastern and Saudi Arabian offices.
'Despite the advertisement depicting a wombat and having the prior approval of DBKL (Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur) the advertisement has now been removed.'
Ramadan, when strict fasting occurs between dawn and sunset, is practiced during the ninth month of the Muslim year.
SOURCE
5 comments:
I looked up some pictures of wombats. I can see why there was confusion about what that critter is. It does look more like a pig than a wombat in that image, especially given the extremely low resolution of the sign and the skin color that's closer to a pig's than to a wombat's brown fur.
So if the resolution was so low and there was no other indication the image was of a pig, then what justification was there to just assume it was a pig and then throw the usual Muslim offence-fit. It should be those muslim complainants who should apologise to the IT Company.
The apology should have been worded "We're sorry that you don't recognize a wombat when you see one."
Stan, it looks like a pig to me. Even after looking up pictures of wombats, it's still looks like a pig. Maybe there are images of their character that are more obviously a wombat. But if an image looks more like a common animal than the animal it's supposed to represent, then I think it's entirely reasonable for that to be the default understanding of that image. That is, if you don't already know what it represents.
Because of that, I think they did not intend to offend the Muslims. That was just a bonus!
The wombat: eats roots shoots and leaves. Aussie joke.
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