JCPenney is currently going through a transition phase as it works to win back the customers it lost under its former CEO. Now the company is dealing with the fallout associated with one of its products.
Redditor Wrestles4Food recently found a JCPenney billboard ad for a tea kettle that looked remarkably like a certain German dictator from World War II, especially when blurred:
Does it look like Hitler? The Telegraph certainly thought so, but JCPenney fired back saying that it was not their intention to evoke the image of Hitler when advertising a tea kettle.
@telegraph Certainly unintended. If we’d designed the kettle to look like something, we would’ve gone w/a snowman: twitter.com/jcpenney/statu…
— jcpenney (@jcpenney) May 28, 2013
Besides the above response, JCPenney has spent a considerable amount of time on Twitter today defending the ad:
@pattonoswalt Totally unintentional. But they’ll need to grab it in stores since it’s sold out online. #SadHipsters
— jcpenney (@jcpenney) May 28, 2013
@miafarrow Certainly unintended. If we designed it to look like something, we would have gone with a snowman or something fun 🙂
— jcpenney (@jcpenney) May 28, 2013
Even if it wasn’t intentional (and it likely wasn’t), the Hitler tea kettle has been good business for JCPenney. It sold out of the kettle online and people are likely picking it up in stores on word of mouth alone. Maybe other brands should start making their products look like Hitler…
But seriously, don’t do that.
[h/t: Business Insider]