Feud and liquor

BOOZE CLUES Critics of Canadian Club ads (below) created satirical versions (above) and posted them online.

Last week, during openings of the film Sex and the City, the Canadian Club whiskey brand held spoof protests in Toronto against “the rise of the pink, girlie cocktail and the demise of the masculine cocktail.”

That gender-role enforcing, battle-of-the-sexes marketing tone won’t surprise you if you’ve caught Canadian Club’s current “Damn Right Your Dad Drank It” campaign, birthed by a Chicago ad agency for Deerfield-based Beam Global Spirits & Wine (which owns the whiskey brand). Examples include an ad at the intersection of Damen and Division Avenues stating YOUR MOM WASN’T YOUR DAD’S FIRST. It features a vintage-looking photo of “your dad”—a tie-clad white guy smirking and reclining in a family-room chair, TV cocktail in hand—with a striking brunette in a polka-dot dress perched on his lap. Other ads in the Canadian Club campaign, like one at the corner of State and Madison streets, none-too-subtly declare YOUR DAD HAD A VAN FOR A REASON.

The locally created ads have ignited a storm of criticism online, mostly from female bloggers who are denouncing the campaign as sexist. Freelance photographer-librarian Michelle Koenig-Schwartz kicked off the critiques after spotting a Canadian Club ad declaring YOUR DAD WAS NOT A METROSEXUAL on a bus stop in a mostly immigrant- and family-filled Toronto neighborhood. “The sight of that big white guy staring out at me with the message about how manly men don’t drink pink cocktails or tweeze their eyebrows just really grated on me,” she says.

Koenig-Schwartz created a downloadable template mirroring the original Canadian Club ad and posted it on her blog (michelle.koenig-schwartz.com), encouraging visitors to make and share satirical versions. Some new girl-power renditions include blogger Coolbyrne’s picture of two bra-clad women kissing, with text stating YOUR DAD WASN’T YOUR MOM’S FIRST and DAMN RIGHT YOUR MOM DRANK IT…AND IT SURE AS HELL WASN’T CANADIAN CLUB. Accompanying photos include people of color and a bevy of queer ladies, some in men’s suits.

Further stirring the pot, Shameless, a progressive magazine for Canadian teen girls, featured some of the mock ads on its blog; Racialicious (racialicious.com), a site devoted to discussing media coverage of the multiracial community, reposted the ads; and the F-Word (thefword.org.uk), a British feminist website, recently covered them.

“The aim [of the campaign] was to be provocative,” wrote Dorene Wharton, marketing director for Canadian Club, in a e-mail reaction sent to Koenig-Schwartz, adding that the campaign was “well-received by women” during market research.

“To have some backlash and to have some people who are angry about the message, I think it’s a by-product of strong creative work,” says Jason Stanfield, creative director/art director at Chicago-based ad agency Energy BBDO, which created the ads. “After several years of strong decline, we’ve seen a turnaround for Canadian Club and a spike in sales.” Stanfield defends the campaign as a celebration of fatherhood. “If my dad was my age now, we’d be friends,” he says. “He hung out with Pan-Am stewardesses and got several numbers in one night.”

Stanfield says he doesn’t agree with Koenig-Schwartz and others, who see the ads as conservative backlash against the growing trend of gender fluidity. “Guys today wear sweatshirts and are slovenly and are holding Bud Lights, or they’re holding vodka drinks or pink drinks,” he says. “And [they] don’t feel like men anymore and don’t feel sophisticated. [But] it’s really easy to get in touch with that [sophisticated] guy by ordering Canadian Club or something brown, something with character.”