Exxon Coffee Ads Used Nazi Slogan
A company advertising coffee at 700 Exxon gas stations in Germany will tear down its posters because they inadvertently used the same slogan as that which stood at the entrance to the Nazis’ Buchenwald concentration camp. The slogan was, “To Each His Own.”
The phrase was originally coined by Cato over 2000 years ago according to Australia’s Herald-Sun, but the German translation “Jedem das Seine” was used at Buchenwald’s gates (pictured) by the Nazis to indicate that the prisoners were getting what they deserved. The slogan was used by Tchibo, a coffee company, in ads at Esso stations on Germany. Esso is a brand of the Exxon oil corporation.
The ads were removed following protests by The Central Council of Jews in Germany. The group told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper that the posters were either “unsurpassable tastelessness” or a reflection of “total ignorance of history.”
Der Speigel notes that Tchibo is at least the fifth company to have used the slogan in its advertising, and then been forced into a reversal. The others:
- Cellphone giant Nokia was criticized by the American Jewish Committee for advertizing exchangeable cellphone covers with it in 1998 and quickly swapped the slogan for Shakespeare’s “As You Like it.”
- Shortly after that, German food retailer Rewe failed to stop a brochure that read “Barbecuing: To Each His Own.” Rewe made a public apology.
- In 1999, fast food company Burger King in the eastern city of Erfurt stopped distributing advertising leaflets with the phrase after people protested.
- And in 2001, customers of Munich-based Merkur-Bank complained about the words being used in an advertising campaign for bank accounts.
Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.
BNET User Analysis