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GAP Got the Holidays!
Watch GAP’s Holiday Ad
This post comes with a disclaimer. I am Jewish. I’m not particularly religious but I am culturally observant (and that doesn’t just mean I get to tell the jokes, eat the food and use Yiddish words). The December holiday season has always been a bit of a sore spot for me because I have always felt left out of the big party. Everything is red and green and decorated so beautifully and the parties and family gatherings are so wonderful but I’ve always been on the outside looking in. Hanukah is lovely too but it isn’t a big deal on the spectrum of Jewish holidays. I know that there is the whole 8 nights of presents thing but as a kid my parents gave me things like pencils on 6 out of 8 of them. (I actually went to Michael’s Craft Store this weekend looking for Hanukah decorations to get my kids excited and there was one measly end cap with plastic junk.)
But this holiday GAP’s new advertising made me feel like I was part of Holiday Fever. I loves the new ads because they shook off some of the recession depression and also because their Cheer campaign actually said the word Hanukah! It was sad to hear that the American Family Association isn’t such a big fan of inclusion and called for a boycott (since put on hold) of GAP because the work didn’t emphasize Christmas enough for their liking. [They put the boycott on the back burner because there is an Old Navy spot in the pipeline that says Christmas enough.]
“As a gesture of our ‘goodwill to men,’ we have decided to suspend our boycott of Gap and its divisions until we see the content of this new commercial,” said Bryan Fischer, the AFA’s director of issues analysis, in a statement. “We firmly believe that Gap is responding to an enormous amount of pressure from the AFA network. It looks like Gap has finally decided that a recession is a bad time to take a principled stand on secularism and alienate a huge percentage of their customer base. We’re happy that they’re apparently keeping Christ and Christmas in the Christmas season.”
My condolences to Crispin Porter + Bogusky who made some really great and inclusive ads only to be punished for the same reason.
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