It was a pretty average Father’s Day for the team at OUTsurance, forced to backpedal after an ad posted to social media caused outrage.

Posted to Twitter and Facebook, and since deleted from both, the ad featured mostly white fathers alongside only one black father.

This led to the inevitable apology tweeted out yesterday afternoon:

The replies to that tweet tell their own story:

OUTsurance’s Peter Cronje speaking to EWN:

We retracted the post and issued an apology because when it was compiled it did not have an appropriate demographic representation. It wasn’t screened by an executive so we will have to make sure in future that we screen them as we screen our TV commercials.

I tell you what hasn’t aged well – these ads:

Best be sure before you sign off on an ad these days, because social media won’t let you drop the ball.

UPDATE – more below from Peter Cronjé via IOL:

“This advert was created by one of our junior ladies in the social media department and I believe she made an innocent mistake when she created and posted this video.

“This is the first time we have had trouble with one of our ads because we make sure that they are representative of the country’s demographics,” Cronjé told The Star shortly after removing the campaign from the company’s social media sites…

Asked whether he had seen and approved the advert before its publishing, Cronjé said he hadn’t, before adding: “We give our social media employees some leeway to run campaigns in order to empower our young staff.

“I will have a word with the young lady to make her more aware of how our campaigns should reflect South Africa’s demographics.”

…“OUTsurance is a responsible corporate citizen and people should not think we are racist,” he said, alluding to various initiatives that he said the company does to uplift black people, including the “only black” points men and women the company employs to ease traffic congestion in Gauteng metros.

[sources:ewn&iol]