Bacardi Breezer Was a Bad Choice: The "Get an Ugly Girlfriend" Campaign

Over the weekend, I found a link to an ad campaign so stupid I thought it might be some kind of satire-fueled trenchant social comment or stealth art or something – the Bacardi Breezer “Get an Ugly Girlfriend” campaign.

The premise: you (the woman consumer who drinks Bacardi Breezers) want to look good this summer.  For this you will need two hot accessories.  One is a Bacardi Breezer.  The other is a an ugly friend to roll with to the beach so that you’ll look better by comparison.

Bacardi’s response to the fact that oops, they did a bad job with this, after the jump.  

On the website, which has since been taken down, there are four fun choices of unattractive women to hang out with.  For example, you can go shopping with Lucy…

“Lucy’s rubbing thighs, magically combined with a sticking out jaw and drooping breasts, will turn any trip to the mall into an unforgettable experience.  Shop like never before, with your own freckled pile of cellulite!”

This campaign makes Bacardi Breezers unappealing to men (because it’s Bacardi Breezers), less-than-perfect women (obviously), and actually all other women as well (because it implies that they either need a fat friend in order to look good themselves OR that they are awful b*tches).

So the only consumer not turned off by this ad is the elusive “hot, terrible woman” demographic.  And those women have rich men to buy them Dom Perignon, so they’re not drinking some gross pink sh*t out of a Florida 7-11 fridge to begin with.  Bacardi issued this statement:

Thank you for taking the time to post your story on Bacardi Breezer.

The campaign you are referring to ran in 2008 for two months in Israel. Even though Bacardi Breezer is not sold or distributed in the United States [editor's note: WRONG], we immediately notified the appropriate Bacardi affiliate and had this website shut down.

Bacardi proudly celebrates diversity and we do not endorse the views of this site. We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this site and thank you for bringing it to our attention.

Bacardi: the Absolut of dumb@ss advertising.

Source: Jezebel.