The latest Toronto IABC event e-mail was sent out today and I browsed over it thinking that the holiday event was an awesome idea. Who wouldn't love celebrating the holiday season at an authentic Russian bar stocked with over 70 different types of vodka?I kept reading the brochure that was sent out and finally came to the bottom where something seemed a little odd. The tag line for the event read "Join the Communist (cator) party" with the 'st' crossed out and 'cator' written in.
I've got two issues with this:
1. Communism isn't really something to joke about - especially not where Russia is concerned. They've got a long and somewhat ugly history with communism.
2. There's a Communist Party of Canada. Why cause confusion by seeming to endorse the party?
I'm assuming that someone on the design team was trying to be cute and play with Pravda's tag line (Join the communist Pravda vodka bar party - with communist crossed out)but, in my opinion, it failed miserably. I'm left wondering at the appropriateness of using that as a tag line and whether or not the IABC is sending out exactly the message that they want to be sending. Perhaps IABC should think their tag lines out a little more carefully for next time.As they say in Russia, chtob vse byli zdorovy!
2 comments:
I think offensive is the only thing to describe this. I have a pretty good sense of humour, but even I think they could have done this more tastefully.
This play on words application was intended as a design element that adopts and adapts elements from the bar's website (which does the same thing but replaces the political party name with Pravda) and not as a tag line. As such, the word "party" referred to a festive occasion vs. a political organization.
IABC is apolitical and IABC/Toronto apologizes for creating any misperception that it supports any political party or for inadvertently offending anyone.
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