The Warehouse Group's incoming CEO says, 'we absolutely got this wrong and we're sorry'
The new CEO of retailer The Warehouse Group has apologised after public complaints led to one of its television advertisements being pulled off-air.
The advertisement for The Warehouse's Red Bag fundraiser was removed after New Zealand's ad regulator found it "offensive".
The television ad, which featured a light purple bag covered in unicorns, stars, and hearts with a text above that read: "can't do long division", drew complaints from the public.
The bag, which also featured a pink ribbon and some light-coloured beads, was set against a bright pink background, with a girl's giggle immediately playing after it.
Complaints claimed the imagery perpetuated the myth that "girls aren't good at maths," an argument that the Complaints Board of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) recently upheld.
"A majority of the Board said the advertisement was offensive because the humour in the advertisement is based on a stereotype that 'girls aren't good at maths'," the board's decision said.
The majority of the board also rejected The Warehouse's defence that the message was supposed to say that pre-school children can't do complicated maths equations because they are too young for it.
"This is because the imagery used to promote the unicorn backpack used colours and imagery traditionally associated with girls. The girl's giggle also reinforced this idea," the board said.
The ASA ordered the advertisement be removed.
"We absolutely got this wrong and we're sorry," Mark Stirton, incoming CEO of The Warehouse Group, told Stuff in a statement.
"We deeply regret creating an advertisement that implies girls are in some Mark Stirton, incoming CEO of The Warehouse Group,way inferior in terms of their ability to do maths, or anything else for that matter."
The Warehouse Group quoted Stirton's statement on a LinkedIn post.
"The ad was signed off internally and we're making changes to our processes and signoffs with our marketing team and agency partners to make sure this cannot happen again," it read.
