Where Did That Chapstick Go?

The latest online scandal started, as many of those things do, with a woman’s rear end. And ChapStick wishes it would all go away.

Yes, ChapStick. The lip-balm maker, owned by Pfizer, decided to run an advertisement prominently showing the behind of a woman searching for her ChapStick behind a sofa. “Where do lost ChapSticks go?” asked the ad.

Along came the inevitable blog post complaining that the image was degrading to women. The blogger also pointed out that ChapStick has been deleting any critical comments on its Facebook page (even after encouraging people to “be heard at Facebook.com/chapstick”).

For many, the idea that ChapStick was censoring was worse than the image itself. So more visited the page to comment, and more saw their comments deleted. I imagine someone over in ChapStick PR has a bad case of carpel tunnel today.

Finally, ChapStick responded by removing the ad and issuing an apology. “We know we don’t always get it right,” the ChapStick team said on its Facebook page. ChapStick also said it complied with Facebook guidelines and removed posts with foul language and repetitive messaging.
Yep Yep Yep…first lesson of PR should be censorship just makes it all worse.  Post an apology and make in sincere.  Once you start deleting comments then you lost.