Taking a little detour into online marketing this morning…
This ad popped up on my Facebook profile this morning. It kind of stopped me cold.
- The title is clear: “For children’s ministers.“
- The picture is of little girls underwear…
- Let that sink in. Strike you as odd?
I clicked on the ad, seeking to understand what girls underwear and children’s ministers had to do with Christmas.
It’s for a curriculum called, Socks and Underwear, by an unnamed publisher on a site I’ve never heard of. (My knowledge of kids ministry curriculum is really limited.) But I did see that it’s normally $100 but they will sell it to you for $45. I’m going to guess that a weird name like this isn’t helping sales. The curriculum itself looks cute, not something I’d use or recommend, but cute nonetheless. The general premise seems to be that we give/receive gifts at Christmas that we don’t want and Jesus is the gift we do want.
Just a little hint to those who like their jobs in kids ministry…. don’t do a series that advertises to you with little girls underwear. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but sexual molestation is just about the scariest thing a parent can imagine when it comes to leaving their kids at church. Not to sound alarmist or anything but a lot of people outside of the church are already suspicious of many church workers because of sexual abuse cases.
Just a little hint to the marketer creating ads… Um, no. Don’t feature little girls underwear in your ads, it’ll attract the wrong types of people.
And while jokes about underpants and stuff like that is totally in bounds for kids ministry— ads using little girls underwear on Facebook feels completely out-of-bounds to me.
Am I alone in this?
Follow-up
After emailing them I received this response:
Thanks for the heads up! We are sorry you were offended. Our FB marketer put a picture of adult underwear up since the title of the series’ is Socks and Underwear. We went ahead and took it down to be on the safe side. Thanks again for writing and letting us know.
My thought – I’m not trying to take the moral high ground here… but “We are sorry you were offended” and taking it down, blaming it on the Facebook marketer, is hardly admitting that it was misguided to begin with. But whatever, less underwear on Facebook is a good thing regardless.
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