Back in November DDB Canada approached Nick Capra, co-owner of Running Free, a Markham, Ont. athletic apparel store, with an offer to do a pro bono ad campaign - meaning they figured that they had an awesome idea they really wanted to do. The idea was to show what happens when us girls don't have a decent running bra, portraits of women with black eyes and broken noses and the line “Support bras, now available.” Nick Capra didn't like the ads, but sought the opinions of his co-workers anyway:
“I do things by consensus, so I showed them to everybody at the shop and they all had the same reaction, which was quite negative...They looked like a domestic violence campaign.”
However, according to Andrew Simon, senior vice-president and creative director at DDB’s Toronto office, Capra gave the agency the go-ahead in writing to produce the ads, though Simon declined to show Marketing a copy of Capra’s approval.
But the ads were sent to adblogs and have thus cause quite a stir on the net, so finally Capra has posted a statement on Running Free’s website calling the ads a “hoax,” “tasteless and offensive” and saying he never authorized the use of the company logo. DDB now wants to apologise and are asking all adbloggers to take the ads down.
