Anybody up for boycotting Barilla Pasta?

On second thought, that's just the boss's opinion. We don't know what the workers think and they need their jobs.

I think he's including female same-sex couples in the term "gay".

I don't, quite. He may know about them.

Barilla's ads are definitely idealized and idyllic versions of a traditional family--with the wife and mother in the role of the cook. How many of us live in a villa in Tuscany? I don't think they are meant to reflect real life in the U.S..


Here's one from Italy--a traditional family, where moma does the cooking and serving.


How many families even sit down and eat together any more?

And what about all the single parent homes, given the divorce rate?

And older people, and people who live alone, don't they eat pasta?

It's not just gay families that Barilla omits from their ads--it's probably most people.

It's not an issue I can get worked up about. If they think a certain traditional family image helps to market their product, let them go on using it.

And I agree with Barilla, if gays, or anyone else, doesn't like that, they don't have to buy or consume their products. I don't find any of this offensive, and I'll continue buying Barilla.

mom did pasta twice a week trying to get the food money to stretch, so I dont do pasta.

JCP tried to do pro gay ads, some might recall, that sure did not work. you dont offend your customers or confused the brand to keep the PC Police happy.

Great info! Never heard of Barilla Pasta in Russia but I will let my countrymen know that there still are normal people and businesses in Europe! I'll personally ask for this pasts in our supermarkets and have everyone I know on the internet do the same!

I think this pretty much nails it for me.
Even if it is mostly traditional family units eating the pasta, it's just plain marketing putting them in nice clean (expensive looking) homes, even the American versions.
Everything just so in the house....come on.....but, that's marketing.

Who wants to watch a commercial where the house in it looks like yours (the general "yours", dirty carpet, door that needs repair, paperwork sitting on the coffee table etc) I wish my bathroom looked like those commercial ones where they're selling shampoo and shaving cream.

Maybe they should air a commercial that shows an individual person sitting in front of their TV or computer (perhaps posting on A2K, I know no one here eats and posts at the same time) eating a bowl of Barilla, with a caption reading "This person might be gay. Buy Barilla" Then they'll get complaints from the gay community saying Barilla is profiling, saying that they are assuming someone is gay because they are alone while eating, or sitting at their TV/computer....maybe they are watching gay porn while having dinner.

Maybe in their traditional family ad, they can add something like "The young daughter in this ad told her parents last week she's gay, and look, everyone is fine with it. They still love each other and eat together, and when they eat, they eat Barilla!"

How many products do you buy, that the person who's standing on the production line, touching and working with the end product you're going to use, absolutley hates the person you are? A bunch. But I guess it doesn't matter if the person repsonsible for filling your orange juice container, putting the liquid in the hopper that's making your bread, screwing the shift knob onto the car you're going to buy hates you because you're (fill in the blank)....As long as the commercials selling the product shows wholesome people using their products, showing you that "you too can be like this"

Now, if I find that Barilla, or any company they own, contributes directly/indirectly to union leaders being murdered, contributing to largely preventable diseases by changing their receipe/formula in some countries, holding educational systems hostage by withholding expected contributions because the school wants to provide the students with choices, and not just their product, etc etc etc....then I'll boycott them.

Sometimes you just can not win.........

In my opinion, he 'd be within his moral rights to make homosexuality
a condition of employment. Homosexuals 'd be 1OO% within their rights
to boycott his products. I 'd never dispute that.
I dont mean this post to be anti-gay,
but rather to be pro-freedom of speech.

In theory, he has as much right to hire ONLY GAY representatives
of his company, as he does to hire none of them.

If he made declarations against MY group, Americans of English descent,
I 'd have no interest in revenge. I support the concept of laissez faire capitalism
and freedom of expression. Sara Lee cake is known to have made financial
contributions to anti-gun groups, to subvert the Bill of Rights.
I 've been asked by NRA to join in boycotting Sara Lee.
I still eat it anyway.







David

ok, but did Guido (or whichever one) Barilla get up one moring and decide suddenly, "Hey, I'm going to go make an announcement to the world that we're not going to use gays in our ads", or was he initially asked by some group about this, and he had to make a response?
I don't know. However, logically it would seem this would have been in answer to something that came up.

If he was asked about it and said "no comment" or "no response" or simply chose not to say anything, wouldn't that have been taken in a negative light also, at least by a number of people? I'll answer that one....yes.

I mean, was the company put between a rock and a hard place, where no matter what they said they'd been in trouble?

What if they said "yes, we are going to use gays"? How many people would then publicly (or many people privately) boycott them for that?

The best they could have done perhaps, in hindsight, was to have said "we'll think about it". Even that could have caused a backlash.

So, I'm curious, how did this statement come about being made at all? Were they approached by some group and asked? Was this a manufactured issue?

How many people in the Barilla family business are gay? I guess as many as in any family. Were they perhaps pragmatic about it, saying "we're in the pasta making business, not political awareness, and it's better business to leave the ads more generic"
I don't know.

What's the story behind this story, besides the fact it was an excuse to put up some cute gifs of people smirking or doing a double take?

What r "gifs" ?

No. But considering them as outcasts is offensive.

That tells you all you need to know about those comments. JCP is in trouble for many reasons, as are many brick and mortar retailers.

Firefly is constantly missing out on that one key point. Barilla and its homophobic executive could have never made their homophobic thoughts public and no one would have gave them any extra thought other then "we like their pasta" or "we love their pasta" or "their pasta is meh," etc....

But with their public proclamation then they are trying to influence public perception on a given issue towards their limited/discriminatory way of thinking or at least to use the ensuing media driven controversy to blatantly pander to those bigots of the world and have them choose Barilla as their pasta of choice.

Have already been posting on the Barilla US page, but I think you're giving the man much too much credit for having an intentional outcome. It was a comment made from his gut that was precisely how he feels about the issue. The rest of us can plan accordingly. I don't have any intention of buying their products going forward (it was previously my main brand of pasta), but I don't think there was any blatant pandering going on.

Perhaps but it never never never a good idea to annoy any of your customers base by taking a position on such a matter no matter what the side happen to be or how PC the side you have taken happen to be.

The idea of adv. is to gain customers not lose them no matter what your feelings of them being bigots or not.

Chick-Fil-A also uses the traditional family theme in their corporate culture, very successfully in spite of some strong vocal objections. it is not clear that the segment of the population who will avoid buying products from corporations that dont sell the "gay is great" message is big enough to care about. you gotta wonder how come the pro gay political pressure groups have so much time on their hands that they get their panties in a twist over how a corporation chooses to shill its products, they must have run out of more important work.

That's nonsense Hawkeye. No one is trying to force corporations into the "Gay is great" extreme of thinking and marketing. The so called "pro gay political pressure groups" are protesting these corporate "Go F Yourself ya f*gs" corporate marketing/policy.

Unfortunately these companies profit from all of the media attention which brings out sympathy from some of the worst people who support the corporation's hideously outdated political and social views. But these gains are ultimately only short term gains and don't necessarily help the company's long term bottom line.

~~~~
10 Reasons Barilla Shouldn’t Have A Gay Family In Its Commercials
http://www.buzzfeed.com/joannaborns/reasons-barilla-could-never-have-a-gay-family-in-its-comm

this us not like Chick-Fil-A who was funding anti gay groups, this company does nothing that is anti-gay, all they do is refuse to sell the pro gay message as they try
to sell their pasta. Anyone who gives a **** has to be really really bored, and easy to offend.

The CEO of Barilla was being interviewed for some reason, and I believe he was specifically asked whether his company would ever show homosexual families in their ads. He said they would not because their company's ad image has always been of the traditional family, and one where the mother does the cooking and serving. They want to link their product to the warmth and comfort of home and the traditional family is sacred to that sort of image.

He went on to say that he, personally, has no anti-gay feelings and that he supports homosexual marriages. He should have shut up at that point, but he went on to say that he does not support adoptions by same-sex couples because the children involved have no say in the decision. But, he did make it clear that the type of family depicted in Barilla's ads did not reflect any personal bias on his part, or any intentional corporate bias regarding homosexuals, but rather a marketing decision to continue to connect their product with a particular view of "home".

His main error was to then, somewhat arrogantly, say that, if homosexuals didn't like such decisions, regarding their ads, they were free not to buy his products. It appears that it was really that dismissive remark that set off this entire furor. The head of one Italian gay rights group immediately responded by saying, in effect, well, if that's what he wants, and that's his attitude, and he doesn't care whether we buy Barilla, then we won't buy Batilla, and they immediately called for a boycott. And that's how the whole furor started.

It was the gay rights groups in Italy who deliberately started the boycott, mainly in reaction to the 'if you don't like our ads, don't buy our product' attitude. They're not, as far as I can tell, really claiming that either Barilla, or his corporation, is actually homophobic or anti-gay, they just don't like his attitude that they might be dispensable consumers. And, I think it must be considered that they are also trying to use Barilla's comments to drum up publicity and support for their issues in Italy, where they are currently trying to get a law, that provides better anti-discrimination protection for homosexuals, passed in the Italian senate.

I think Barilla's remarks, and this entire issue, have been blown way out of proportion, initially by the Italian gay rights movement, in order to help them gain political capital and public opinion sympathy that will help to insure passage of that currently pending legislation. And the internet helps them to use this issue to promote the general cause of gay rights internationally, particularly because Barilla's products are sold internationally. And publicity from this matter is also useful in trying to gain support for some legal recognition of same-sex unions in Italy. Attitudes toward that issue have slowly gained support in that direction over the years, but currently the legal protections for LGBT individuals, and the legal protections and benefits for same-sex couples in Italy, are not equal to those of heterosexuals.

So, to some extent, I think Barilla is being used as a scapegoat in order to gain publicity and support for the gay rights movement, and to demonstrate their consumer power. It remains to be seen whether this will be an effective tactic and strategy. I see nothing, so far, to indicate that Barilla, in terms of corporate policy, actually discriminates against homosexuals in any way.

As an aside, it should also be noted that Barilla has gotten flack because they still show only women doing the cooking and serving of food for the family, at a time when gender roles are no longer that rigid. Barilla's response is that this highlights the importance of women as central to the notion of home and family. At least they are consistent in pushing their traditional idyllic image to sell their pasta.