Forget the John Lewis Christmas ad last year (sorry Elton), let's be honest, the real tear-jerker was Iceland's controversial Orangutan. So controversial it seemed, that the ad was banned from television as it was deemed to be "too political."
Everywhere you went, people were applauding Iceland for raising awareness for the environment and for being the first to stand for something ethical; pledging to not sell own-brand products that use palm oil as of January 2019.
So quite frankly, I was gutted to hear that there are still products being sold in stores that still contain Palm Oil. And to make things worse, instead of taking their own-brand products off the shelves, they’ve apparently simply removed their name from the packaging.
Was this all just a great big marketing ploy? Did Iceland just lie through their teeth and pull on the heartstrings at Christmas time?
And does the fact that I’m still thinking about it mean that the campaign was beyond successful?
Iceland has faced accusations about hypocrisy after it emerged that the low-cost supermarket was still selling own-brand products containing palm oil, despite a high-profile campaign against it. The supermarket's controversial Christmas advert, which was not allowed to run on television due to being produced by a political organisation, Greenpeace, railed against the use of palm oil, and Iceland vowed to stop using it in own-brand products. The company promised: "The Iceland no palm oil pledge is that by the end of 2018, 100 per cent of the supermarket's own label food lines will contain no palm oil, reducing demand for palm oil by more than 500 tonnes per year." However, an investigation by the BBC found that the store still sells 28 own-brand products with palm oil or fat, as well as more than 600 from other brands.
Read the original article here