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Why co-opting punk for ads is risky

Canada’s largest phone carrier had to apologize after a vintage Sex Pistols “BELSEN WAS A GAS” pin appeared in billboard ads for its cellphones.

The ads for Bell Canada’s Solo discount service showed a young woman decked out in flashy punk rock attire, with a button that reads “Belsen was a gas” — the controversial title of a song by the Sex Pistols, and a reference to Nazi Germany’s Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Link. (thanks, Farai Chideya!)

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