Marketers; always up to something. Struggling marketers; always resorting to desperate measures.
You’ve probably never heard of the Angel of the North. It’s a large structure of a 66 foot tall angel with wings that are 177 feet across. It’s located in Gateshead England. It was created by Antony Gormley in 1998 and was created to celebrate the work of coal miners and signify a transition from the industrial age to the information age.
Morrisons, the fourth largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom, thought it would be really cool to project a 177 foot wide image of a baguette on the wings of the angel.
Gormley is not pleased and said, with resignation,”I’d rather the Angel is not used for such purposes, but it’s out there.”
Those against the move took to Twitter calling the stunt “cultural vandalism” and “philistine and disgraceful.”
Following the outcry, Morrisons issued an apology saying, “We’re sorry if you thought we got carried away by shining a baguette on the Angel of the North and apologize unreservedly to those to whom we have caused offense. We were trying something different which was meant to put a smile on peoples faces but clearly it wasn’t to everybody’s tastes. We’re so proud of our northern roots and the last thing we want to do is offend anybody.”
Ingenious stunt or lame-ass idiocy?
