Apple Takes Down Skinny Ad

Posted by Lori Henry Aug 28, 2007

Recently, Apple came out with an ad campaign for their new iMac. It showed a few screens with images of people smiling and having fun. The tagline "The New iMac. You Can't be Too Thin. Or Too Powerful" is written near the top. Obviously this was going to upset people and offend them it did.

A recovered anorexic wrote an open letter in the Huffington Post about how upset she was about the campaign. The Alliance for Eating Disorder Awareness wrote a very public and highly publicized letter to Apple stating how unresponsible their ad was.

Within days, the ad on the Apple web site disappeared. It wasn't announced publicly, as far as I know, so I'm not sure what the company's response was to the issue. Along with the above letters, there were hundreds of blog posts and articles written in opposition to the campaign. Perhaps Apple realized how much controversy they were creating? Or perhaps they planned the attention for PR reasons?

We'll see if they broadcast an official statement any time soon.