It has been a couple of weeks now, and you’d probably thought (as I did) that the Belvidere Vodka scandal had passed out of the news story. True, the original ad was crass, tasteless, and possibly a trigger for PTSD episodes in certain people, but the company pulled the ad, posted a formal apology written by their CEO, made a donation to the country’s largest anti-sexual violence organization (RAINN), and probably fired a few people (for creating the scandal, if not necessarily for their idiocy in creating the ad in the first place). Short of having the sense not to do such things in the first place, you’d have to day that Belvidere had handled the situation as well as you could expect, and everyone should probably just get on with whatever they were doing. Except that now it turns out the company may have used the original picture without the permission of the owners, including the woman in the picture…
You can pick up the original story on the Superstation KTLA Los Angeles web page, but it seems that the woman pictured in the original ad (who appears to be fighting off an attacker) owns the rights to that picture and the company never asked for permission to use it; they just ripped the image down off the Internet and used it however they wanted to. The image is taken from a comic on-line video put out by her production company, and didn’t originally have anything to do with vodka, date rape, or controversy, but in future no one is likely to see it as anything else. Even worse, the owner has gone from a well-regarded (if slightly obscure) working professional to the person at the center of the scandal; the negative reactions from people who believe she was hired by Belvidere to make this image especially for the occasion should more than negate any benefit to be gained as the victim in the famous image. Naturally, she’s suing the company…
Now, I don’t have anything deep or profound to say about this new fracas; Belvidere should definitely have known better than to go stealing images from off of the Internet, and could almost certainly have afforded to hire their own actors and stage their own picture instead. Even a very expensive photo shoot probably would not have cost as much as this lawsuit is going to, and the fact that while the company (and its CEO) were busy apologizing to the world at large they neglected to say anything to the person whose property they store and whose life (and potentially career) they have ruined is just going to make things worse if the case goes to court…
I call this to your attention because this whole episode can be summed up in a single word: professionalism. As in, Belvidere displayed absolutely no professionalism during the conception, development, launch or damage control for this whole stunt. Any working professional (in any creative field) knows that images are intellectual property, and unless you have access to the copyright you do not have the right to use them. Any working professional (in any creative, communications, linguistics or academic field) knows that humor is not universal, and things that you believe represent edgy, wacky comedy may be viewed as intentional infliction of mental anguish by someone else. And any working professional (in any business field) knows that treating any company activity with the care that an eight-year-old might use for a school project is simply asking for trouble, usually in the form of lost sales, damaged reputation, expensive litigation, and occasionally protesters burning you in effigy in the streets…
Don’t let this happen to your business…
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