A story in USA Today quotes a crisis management expert and a public relations consultant who both think that Mars Inc. should "develop some very positive program to show they are progressive and inclusive," in response to gay organizations who complained about a Super Bowl Ad showing two car mechanics sharing a kiss over a Snickers bar.
Before jumping off a cliff, I would hope Mars Inc. spends a little time reflecting on the response and then develops a communications plan. Just because you're suddenly embroiled in a small controversy doesn't mean you should immediately run out and start developing 'sensitivity training' programs or take out national advertising explaining how sorry you are that your product slighted someone. An apology might be nice, but for what? Attempting to use humor in a way that offended a slice of the population? In fact, in the article, Cyd Ziegler, co-founder of Outsports.com, a website for gay sports enthusiasts, said he 'had no problem with it,' meaning I suppose, that he had no problem with the ad or the humor in it. Now, my guess is Ziegler's going to have to apologize too.
Now, if the Snickers Super Bowl Ad had been linked to some sort of mass diabetic coma following the game then I could see how we might need a little crisis management program to defend the company. And the company seems to be taking its time as Masterfoods' Alice Nathanson pointed out; "We've done what we can."
I've been reading Peter Shankman's book Can We Do That?: Outrageous PR Stunts and Why Your Company Needs Them and suggest that this is just the sort of publicity stunt Mars and its Snickers Bar division Masterfoods USA intended. While the company has dropped the planned interactive ad portion from their website, now everyone is looking for the pulled spot. The social media and word-of-mouth impact of the ad following the big game is producing more results than even Bob Parson's of GoDaddy might have envisioned: folks are looking at the ad, running to the Mars website for more, telling their friends about the spot and I'll bet, when they head down to the nearest Piggly Wiggly, their going to be buying Snicker's bars. This might turn out to be one of the best intentional, or unintentional, uses of social media+PR in 2007.
