It wasn't the wrath of God that brought Rick Kieffe to Jesus. No, it was a lot of upset bloggers and blog readers that brought him into the light. Whether or not they were atheists is immaterial. They were undoubtedly people doing their part to clean the world of bigotry and intolerance. The calls will continue to come in, however, as this story is just getting off the ground and Kieffe will have more apologizing to do before it all settles down. If he's genuine, then this will blow over and he can get back to running his business. If not, he will end up pouring more fuel on this bonfire and have to change his phone number (which is currently 661-824-2477 and 661-256-2811). At a minimum, he should fire the moron who is his Oklahoma ad producer.
The Bakersfield Californian has his first apology
:
Car dealer regrets ads urging non-Christians to 'sit down and shut up'
Rick Kieffe, owner of Kieffe and Sons Ford in Mojave and Rosamond, insisted Wednesday that he does not remember approving the ad, which he said was written by his longtime advertising writer and producer in Oklahoma.
“It’s just something that went by us,” said Kieffe, who does not attend church but considers himself “a Christian spirit.” “We’re obviously sorry that it offends a given segment who identifies themselves as atheist.”
3 comments:
Kieffe's excuse of not remembering to approve the ad is disingenuous. I've worked as a creative for a number of years and many many of those years in advertising. Small operations have to sign-off on everything, considering the money involved. The cost of production for a 30 second spot isn't that bad, the media buy is. More often than not, the copy and concept for these ads are written in-house, meaning Kieffe or someone in his marketing department did. Kieffe, then confirms this with by stating an idea he had for a 10 Commandments ad. He's a liar. Add that to his Christian sensibilities.
If the ad ran without review then that demonstrates a management failure that must be addressed.
If the ad ran with review then it is a failure of human decency.
The president of the company must declare himself personally responsible (directly or indirectly), apologize then take steps to prevent the problem from happening again.
Further, he needs to recognize that he didn't just offend atheists, he offended ALL non-Christians (and should have offended Christians, too!).
I wrote directly to Ford corporate headquarters about this. Their response:
This specific issue has been addressed by Ford Motor Company personnel with appropriate
representatives at Kieffe and Sons Ford in Mojave, California. Our investigation
has determined that the advertising was placed in error. Corrective actions have
been taken to prevent this from happening again.
I really despise the "non-apology" apology from Kieffe, so commonly used: I'm sorry if anyone was offended. Not sorry that he said it, just sorry that someone had a negative reaction. Feh.
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