Wal-Mart? Nazis? What?

Here’s something that I completely missed the first time around, but it fits somewhat with the conversation thread we’ve been having on advertising (here and here). In May, Flagstaff, Arizona, held some local elections, one of which was on a proposition limiting the size of big-box stores. Wal-Mart, which has done quite well with its big-box stores, thank you very much, opposed the proposition and campaigned against it. Part of the campaign included a series of ads intended to remind voters of various rights they enjoy (speech, religion, you know the drill) and to connect those rights to the choice of where to shop. It doesn’t sound like the most clever ad campaign I’ve ever heard of, but they didn’t ask me.

Where Wal-Mart made its misstep was in an ad that ran in the Arizona Daily Sun about our freedom to choose reading material. “Should we let government tell us what to read?” it asked. And what more dramatic way to illustrate this question than with a 1933 Nazi book burning? (A pdf is available here.) After people were understandably outraged, Wal-Mart quickly apologized but pled ignorance: How were they supposed to know the picture was of a bunch of Nazis? The head of the ad agency that designed the campaign said, "We believed it was a Southern book burning." I guess the Nazi soldiers, clearly visible tossing material on the fire, weren’t a big enough hint.

That Phoenix ad agency withdrew from its Wal-Mart contract after the election (the proposition to limit the size of the stores failed, so Wal-Marts in Flagstaff can be as massive as they please), and the resignation of Wal-Mart's regional community affairs director for that area, whose office had approved the ad, was effective today.

When all this blew up in the first place, Think Progress took a moment to appreciate the irony of Wal-Mart’s concern over our freedom to read what we choose coexisting with its policy of not carrying materials with which it disagrees (such as Jon Stewart and The Daily Show’s America (The Book)).