Major corporations often avoid or otherwise censor religious symbols in their advertisements so as not to offend people of different confessions, but Porsche did a hack job of it earlier this week and had to issue a formal apology, Carscoops is reporting.
The company issued a 2.5-minute-long video dedicated to its iconic 911 sports car turning 60 years old. Among other things, it included a glimpse of the Jesus Christ statue over Lisbon, Portugal. You can find the base of the statue 44–45 seconds into the video, but the sculpture itself appears digitally removed from the picture.
When one of the viewers pointed it out and his post gathered millions of views, Porsche came out with an official apology and said it was a mistake. The company shared a new version of the video with the statue in full sight.
Whether to include any kind of potentially offensive imagery in your content is debatable – after all, it is all but impossible to have a wide audience and never offend anyone at least once. On the other hand, we suspect that just not including the scene with the sculpture in the video to begin with would have worked better than editing it out via digital postprocessing.
What do you think?