}

Saturday, January 29, 2011

I won’t marry Westfield

Today I got an email from Westfield, the Australian company that is by far the largest operator of shopping malls in New Zealand. The subject line of the email was, “Arthur, will you marry me?” I immediately unsubscribed from their email mailing list.

The email was promoting a competition in which people might win a billboard with their Valentine’s Day message of up to 20 words. The email advised recipients to “shout sweet nothings” and linked to a site that told visitors to “Write your poem, proposal or message here”.

I don’t have a problem with the competition, though personally I find it more silly than romantic. Nor do I have a problem with them emailing invitations to enter competitions. In fact, I ended up on their list in the first place because I entered a competition (knowing full well that would put me on their email list), and I just couldn’t be bothered to unsubscribe—until today.

It was that word “marry” that motivated me: Westfield used as a tagline something I cannot do in either in New Zealand or in my home state of Illinois (or most of the US, for that matter), that is, marry my partner. Both New Zealand and Illinois enacted separate and more-or-less-equal civil unions, but marriage itself is reserved for heterosexuals only.

Westfield wasn’t making a political statement of any kind, and they weren’t trying to be offensive. Instead, they were just using the normal heterosexual assumptions that virtually all marketers do, something gay people are used to filtering out. In fact, I wrote about exactly that a couple years ago.

I don’t need to be reminded of what I cannot do, and I don’t need to support such marketing, no matter how small that support might be, like receiving emails. So, Westfield’s email really just gave me the kick I needed to unsubscribe, finally, from their email list, something I should’ve done weeks ago simply because they really had no value to me.

This extremely minor incident highlights how assumptions made with no malice intended can still strike a sour note. It’s a minefield for marketers, and I don’t envy them. But I do wish they’d try just a little bit harder to not always make heterosexist assumptions. Oh, and they should stop marketing things to women by almost always using pink. That annoys me, too. Come to think of it, they really should just stop stupid marketing campaigns and get more clever, and that would fix most of this.

2 comments:

Deb McGhie (Westfield NZ, PR Manager) said...

On behalf of Westfield, I wish to express our sincere apologies for any offence the email subject line from our Valentine’s Day campaign may have caused or concern this created for you.

Please be assured that was never our attention.

We value the opportunity to share our news with subscribers through these electronic centre newsletters.

In future we will take every care to ensure our communication to database recipients is more considered.

Once again our apologies

Deb McGhie, Westfield New Zealand, PR Manager

Arthur Schenck said...

Thank you very much, Deb. I wasn't personally offended but what was, as I said, an extremely minor incident.

My intent was to call attention to the extent to which marketing is a minefield and that campaigns targeting the majority can unintentionally exclude other people, in this case, by describing something that is impossible for gay New Zealanders to do—marrying their partner.

So, I was more mildly annoyed than offended. I've gone to Westfield malls since I got the email and will continue to do so, so clearly this was no big deal.

But if anyone stopped for a second to think about what I said, then that's great.

And so, too, was your apology. It wasn't necessary, but is sincerely appreciated.