Advertising Oversight? Zazzle Offers Personalized Nazi Products
Sometimes when a company reaches a certain size certain small but important details seem to get overlooked. During some research of few culturally sensitive search terms for my Banned T-Shirts blog I found Zazzle right there as the second result in Google for “Nazi T-shirts”.
I am not here to make judgments on Zazzle’s design inventory and whether or not certain t-shirts are appropriate or offensive. The user-submitted designs range from the soup Nazi inspired by Seinfeld, to an image of George Bush dressed up as Hitler and even some anti-Nazi/anti racism t-shirts. What got me was how the Nazi designs were advertised in the organic search results. I know that it wasn’t a human who typed these phrases for a SEO description and it is just their stock titles and descriptions but it is not an excuse. Would a socially sensitive human choose these phrases to advertise Nazi t-shirts?
-”Design your own personalized Nazi products for free”
-”Shop for Nazi T-shirts, Shirts, Posters, Mugs, Cards…”
-”Zazzle lets you find shop and buy Nazi T-shirts”
Currently Zazzle is the only one of the major t-shirt retailers who has done SEO for Nazi t-shirts. Cafepress has actually completely blocked the tag for “nazi” in there marketplace. Companies like Walmart have come under heavy fire over the past months about selling Nazi inspired merchandise. You can follow that story over at the Consumerist.
How would you suggest changing Zazzle’s advertising slogans for Nazi products them to make them more culturally sensitive? As always, we want your feedback.
Tags: zazzle, zazzle advertising
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Wow! I don’t know how you can change the phrasing to make the advertising of Nazi products more culturally sensitive! I think the word “Nazi” itself is a very divisive term here in the U.S.A. I don’t know how people react to it in other countries. But, I suspect that in most western countries the word itself is a huge NO NO. Now I understand why Cafe Press has censored the tag “Nazi” in its market place.
Steve :~)