Promo Videos Gone Wrong: No Wonder Israel Didn’t Make the World Cup?

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  03.24.09 | 10:31 AM ET

Here’s a pet peeve: when products that I would otherwise enjoy launch advertising campaigns that are so overwhelmingly gendered, there’s no doubt that the company in question has no interest in me, my matching X chromosomes—or my money. (See: beer ads, professional sports promos, and a certain outdoors-oriented travel magazine.)

Why, you might ask, would the brightest advertising minds deliberately cut 50 percent of the world’s population out of their calculations, by doing the marketing equivalent of hanging up a “No Girls Allowed” sign? I’m still figuring out an answer to that one. In the meantime, check out this Israeli tourism spot, and tell me this isn’t the beer ad of travel promos:


Eva Holland is co-editor of World Hum. She is a former associate editor at Up Here and Up Here Business magazines, and a contributor to Vela. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


3 Comments for Promo Videos Gone Wrong: No Wonder Israel Didn’t Make the World Cup?

Mideastweb: Middle East 03.24.09 | 3:59 PM ET

If it were any other country but Israel, you would not even notice. What do the tourism ads for Saudi Arabia look like? Or Spain?

Eva Holland 03.24.09 | 4:06 PM ET

Well, in this series I’ve already poked fun at tourism ads for Britain (Aberdeen) and the US (Nebraska), with more nations to come, so if you’re implying that this lighthearted and totally apolitical post is purely a symptom of anti-Israeli/anti-Semitic sentiment on my part, you’re wrong.

I haven’t come across any particularly funny or objectionable Saudi or Spanish tourism ads yet, but if you find some, please do send them my way.

Scribetrotter 04.12.09 | 6:21 AM ET

For years SAS - Scandinavian Airlines System - used the following ad tagline: SAS - The Businessman’s Airline.

Guess who boycotted them for half a decade? And this was progressive Scandinavia…

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