Your current television commercial, featuring a construction worker who falls and impales himself on a steel rod and then retreats to a nearby bar for a glass of hard lemonade, is really in very poor taste. Putting aside the inexplicable subject matter (why do you apparently think that “Mike’s makes you forget you’re bleeding to death” is an attractive marketing concept?), the commercial is a graphic affront to workers, business owners, and government agencies who devote their careers to occupational safety. More importantly, I’m sure the families of the approximately 700 victims who die in similar construction accidents each year (not to mention the more than 90,000 workers who suffer serious but non-lethal injuries due to falls) are much more deeply offended than we are by your choice of “humor."
Advertising Campaigns and Workplace Safety - There Is A Connection
And Jordan Barab of Confined Spaces has picked up on it in today's post, Nothing Funnier Than A Trench Collapse. An article on an advertising campaign for the new Charlotte Bobcats NBA franchise highlighting cardboard cut outs of visiting NBA stars meeting with disasters (which is now being reviewed "in light of recent events"), sparks memories of an earlier ad campaign for Mike's Hard Lemonade and an OSHA Director's letter. The whole letter is worth checking out, not only for the serious point, but for the touch of humor. Here's the money quote: