The American Family Association suspended its Christmas season boycott of Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic after Gap released their new "Cheer Factory" campaign.
The Christian organization, AFA, originally called for the boycott because they believed Gap has downplayed the word "Christmas" over the last couple of years in their advertising. Gap responded by saying that they have tried to stay away from being religion-specific in the past to appeal to a wider range of people.
The new holiday ads for Gap feature different groups of dancers cheering about new winter clothes and the Christmas season while dancing. AFA executives believe that Gap has made these ads in response to the pressure they put on them.
"We firmly believe that Gap is responding to an enormous amount of pressure from the AFA network. It looks like Gap has finally decided that a recession is a bad time to take a principled stand on secularism and alienate a huge percentage of their customer base. We're happy that they're apparently keeping Christ and Christmas in the Christmas season," said Brian Fischer, the AFA's director of issues analysis.
On the other hand, Gap representatives have said that the ads were made months in advance, before the boycott was even initiated. Old Navy also released an ad with "Merry Christmas" included, which held off the boycott, but was also developed months in advance.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a Christian group wants to hear more about Christmas in advertising, but I have nothing against a company for trying to appeal to more people and offend less. Gap's new commercials are incredibly entertaining, and I commend them on the new campaigns. I just hate to see this group bashing on them for trying to be all-encompassing. I'm not sure what to think about the skewed ethics here.
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