Twitterati slams company’s lily-white ad

OUTsurance has blamed a junior employee for the “anti-Black” Father’s Day social media advert that backfired on the company after it caused a furore on social media.

The advert shows several collated video clips, where men – who are mostly white – do a myriad of positive activities with their children to celebrate yesterday’s Father’s Day.

The video advert was captioned: “Happy #FathersDay to all amazing dads out there”. But Twitter users were scathing of the advert, arguing the campaign showed that only white men made good fathers.

One user, Pholoho Selebano, wrote: “@OUTsurance first you raised R250 000 for Knysna fires, but have never donated to the shack fire victims. Now an anti-Black fathers day ad (sic).”

Peter Cronje, head of marketing at the insurance company, agreed that the advert was “demographically inappropriate”, and said it was an “innocent mistake” by a junior employee.

He said the Knysna money collected went to the majority black neighbourhoods of the town.