Friday, June 29, 2012

Got your gay Oreos yet?

You've probably seen this picture half a dozen times already. It's a visual representation of support for gay pride, produced by Nabisco, the fine folks who proudly bring you new and improved junk food.

I put "gay" in italics just in case you've forgotten that June 25th was known for many years as Gay Pride Day, celebrated with Gay Pride parades, fudge-packing contests and other manners of gaiety.

Now the LGBTQ community has decided to delete the "gay" from the title of the festivities, but we all know what it's about, don't we. It's yet another part of the campaign to make homosexuality, in all its perverse forms, appear "normal" and acceptable according to modern and progressive community standards.

And it's not just one day or even one week now. Such is the strength of the queer lobby in Washington that we have a whole "LGBT Pride Month", to be celebrated from sea to shining sea. And Kraft Nabisco, being savvy marketers, has not been shy about jumping on the boys-in-the-bandwagon.

Earlier this week, this picture of an Oreo cookie with six layers of sugary goop in the colours of the gay rainbow flag, was posted onto Nabisco’s Facebook page. The image was accompanied by the caption “June 25 Pride” and “Proudly Supports Love”.

Sadly for Nabisco, not everyone loves the gay Oreo, or the whole idea of gay pride with all that entails. The Facebook post drew more than 23,000 comments in the first 24 hours. [That's more than we get in an entire day! Ed.] 48 hours later the number of comments had almost doubled.

Many commenters expressed -- some quite forcefully -- their abandonment of brand loyalty to Nabisco and its Oreo products, while others threatened to unlike the Oreo page and boycott the cookies altogether. One commenter went so far as to launch a boycott campaign against Nabisco on Facebook. According to the New York Daily News, the creator of the "Boycott Oreo" Facebook page wrote, "No. I do not hate gay people. I am not a 'homophobe' … I am against the lifestyle choice, however. It goes against Biblical principals and against how nature intended… I refuse to support the lifestyle or what Oreo/Kraft is doing. So I have decided to not buy their products."

Like the gay Oreo cookie or hate it, you can't deny that the whole thing has been a huge PR success for Kraft Nabisco. It reminds me of the firestorm of controversy that erupted when Coca-Cola announced it was withdrawing the classic X7 formula and forcing "New Coke" down our throats -- literally. After their allegedly market-driven reversal of that decision, I asked an acquaintance (a VP at one of Coke's international divisions) if the whole thing wasn't just a gigantic publicity stunt. "No," he replied. "We're not that smart."

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