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Dairy Queen International
Grade: C+
Earlier in 2003, Dairy Queen launched a television ad, created by New York's Grey Worldwide Advertising, in which a very overweight man returns several times to a Dairy Queen counter, requesting a particular ice cream treat. At one point, he shows up in a ballet outfit, trying to pretend that he is a twin sister of a girl he is with, and when the counter clerk looks at him strangely, he says he has a "thyroid problem." The insinuation is, of course, that the reason he is so overweight and not slim like his "twin" is his thyroid.
After hearing from a number of thyroid patients who found the ad insulting, I contacted the president and executive vice president of Dairy Queen, to share with them the concerns of the thyroid patient community. I explained that:
After quite a bit of back and forth with various spokespeople, I finally was able to get through to Executive Vice President of Marketing, Michael Keller, to make the case for thyroid patients. At that point, Dairy Queen was finally willing to reevaluate its position and they finally decided to edit the ad to remove the offending thyroid reference. Keller and his Dairy Queen management realized that the ad didn't work, because it alienated a large, vocal group of potential customers.
Dairy Queen gets a C. That’s the average of the F the company would have received for approving and running its thyroid-offensive ad and not changing it, and an A for agreeing to pull the ad when contacted by thyroid patients.
In the end though, it’s not often that a company or organization is willing to not only say it has been wrong, but to be willing to do what it takes to make things right! So Dairy Queen gets kudos for that. And ice-cream loving thyroid patients of America can go back to eating our dip cones and Blizzards again!
