Ogilvy: ‘We deeply regret’ ad about shooting of 14-year-old
The agency’s India office created the ad for a mattress company. It depicts Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai getting shot, then ‘bouncing back.’
The idea behind a series of print advertisements that Ogilvy & Mather created for Indian mattress company Kurl-on is that famous people—Steve Jobs and Mahatma Gandhi among them—get knocked down, but then they hit one of the brand’s mattresses and “bounce back.”
One of the ads in the series has created a massive uproar because it depicts a cartoon version of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani education activist who was 14 when she was brutally shot in the head by the Taliban. That’s what she needed to “bounce back” from.
Here’s the ad:
According to The Huffington Post, the ad was conceived in the agency’s India office and designed at a Chilean studio. At least one employee at the studio reportedly expressed concern about the ad but that Kurl-on had asked for “an example of heroism that’s very powerful.”
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