Bloomingdale's Date Rape Ad - Don Draper Anyone?

Bloomingdale's ad endorsing date rape? Yikes.

Can you believe that Thanksgiving is just two weeks from today?

For those of you who are cooking, it wasn't my intent to stress you out or anything; consider it a helpful holiday "two-minute warning" from the Culturegeist if you have to shop, order a pre-cooked turkey or make travel plans.

For retailers, advertisers and many of us, Thanksgiving marks the official opening to the holiday shopping season.

Given all the negative impact from bad publicity that large retailers in New York City like Macy's and Barney's have faced in recent years following some really troubling incidents related to the treatment of African-American shoppers, one would think that major retailers would make not offending shoppers right before one of the biggest shopping seasons of the year a priority, right?

The ad (pictured above) taken from a Bloomingdale's holiday catalog, is getting a lot of attention (and comments) on Twitter and other social media platforms today because the text accompanying the ad sounds a lot like an endorsement of date rape - the story is blowing up on major media outlets too.

Like Danielle Paquette's Washington Post story analyzing what the ad says about rape.

If you can't read the words between the leering guy on the right and the smiling unsuspecting blond woman on the left, it reads:

"Spike Your BEST FRIEND'S eggnog when they're not looking."

Really? Bloomingdale's green-lit this ad in this day and age when date rape is recognized nationally as a widespread entrenched social crisis affecting institutions like schools and the military? 

Someone at Bloomingdale's thinks they're Don Draper

Now if this was the fictional world of Mad Men, I could see Don Draper (pictured left) pitching this ad in a smoke-filled conference room in front of a bunch of white guys in suits with tumblers of scotch in front of them in the 1960's as they prepare to head out to a three-hour Manhattan lunch and get sauced on the ad agency's dime.

But this is 2015 and the honchos over at Bloomingdale's are obviously already hard at work trying to stem the bleeding from this disastrous self-inflicted PR wound to one of the most widely-recognized retail brands in the world.

No doubt the emails are flying and phones are ringing while the brain-trust at Bloomingdale's tries to come up with a way to demonstrate to female shoppers that the company didn't really intend to suggest that intentionally spiking a woman's drink with alcohol or a date-rape drug like GHB would make for a happy holidays.

Or prompt said woman to go out and shop at Bloomingdale's after whatever transpires when the leering perv in the ad image spikes the woman's eggnog.

But given the importance of the role American women play with major purchasing decisions around the holidays, I think this ad reflects the glaring lack of diversity that still exits in the hermetically-sealed world of advertising - a problem that the experts have been talking about for years.

Now as I've mentioned before on this blog, I used to work in advertising when I lived in New York City. I  know a little about the creative challenges related to visualizing images designed to convey a sales or marketing objective and then coming up with words designed to influence someone's purchasing or behavioral decision.

It's not easy. An ad may look simple, but it's not and a lot of work goes into incorporating complex research and data intended to help advertisers target a very specific demographic.

So that's just one of the reasons a lot of people are wondering what the Hell the copywriter who came up with that ad and the director or exec who approved it was thinking.

As a former copywriter, my guess is the ad is a subtle and poorly-executed attempt to play off the throwback appeal and politically-incorrect aesthetic of Mad Men where sexual harassment in the workplace was all too common.

Unfortunately, the creators of this Bloomingdale's ad forgot that Mad Men is a fictional television show that was set in the 60's and early 70's.

Given the failure of the advertising industry to take responsibility to attract a more diverse talent pool into the creative and executive ranks, this ad can probably be attributed to the fact that it was assigned to a bunch of Ivy-league educated frat guys who've watched way to much Mad Men sitting in a room who thought it was clever and risque.

When in fact, it was just plain offensive and demeaning to women; what a way for Bloomingdale's to start off the holiday shopping season.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear that offending women and ethnic minorities has become a pre-holiday tradition for large retailers in New York City.