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Christian group gives 'sinful' ice-cream product cold shoulder
Episcopal News Service
Issue:
Section:
2003-052-6
Posted: Friday, March 07, 2003
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A new range of ice-cream bars named after the seven deadly sins has drawn the ire of a Christian group in the Netherlands.
Under the premium brand name Magnum, the ice-cream bars come in seven new flavors: vanity, jealousy, gluttony, lust, revenge, greed and sloth. Devil horns and a forked tail have been added to the M of the word Magnum on the wrapper. Lust offers creamy vanilla ice cream covered in pink strawberry chocolate while gluttony features rich chocolate ice cream smothered by a white chocolate coating.
The protest comes from Christians for Truth, a South African organization with branches in a number of European countries. The group is calling on consumers to boycott outlets that sell ice cream produced by the Anglo-Dutch food giant Unilever, the makers of Magnum.
Jan de Bruin, chair of the group's Dutch branch, wrote in a letter to a Unilever subsidiary that the promotion was 'blasphemous' because it 'trivializes' sin. De Bruin said the ice cream advertising campaign was 'very painful' for those who had 'experienced the power of sin.' He stressed that the problem was not with the product itself, which he described as 'first-rate.'
The limited-edition bars have already gone on sale in South Africa and Australia, and the company is planning to launch the product in the Netherlands later this year. In Australia, the company's ice-cream sales have risen, with vanity already sold out and lust well on the way, B&T Marketing and Media analysts reported. And an Australian advertising campaign to promote the bars won a major award at the 2002 International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France.
The advertising campaign was not intended to upset customers but to impress on them that there were seven new varieties, Robert-Hein Schermers, marketing manager of Ola, Unilever's ice-cream brand in the Netherlands, wrote in reply to De Bruin's letter. International research undertaken before the launch of the ice cream, said Schermers, had found 'that the use of the seven sins is not seen as offensive.'
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