Bell Canada has a discount cellular division called “Solo”. In an apparent attempt to be “hip” and “edgy”, the company approved a series of billboards with a “punk rock girl” on them. Unfortunately for Bell Canada, the “punk rock girl” was wearing a bunch of buttons… one of which said “Belsen was a Gas” – the name of a Sex Pistols song.
Belsen was, of course, a Nazi death camp. The title of the song is a play on the old slang term “gas” meaning something fun (“That movie was a gas!”) and the Zyklon B gas that the Nazis used to kill millions of innocent people. The title of the song is meant to be ironic (the song is vehemently anti-totalitarian), but the distinction would understandably be lost on people who didn’t know better. Because of this, Bell Canada has decided to scrap all of the ads – which included several billboards and “around 30” smaller displays (such you’d find on busses), which were cropped and didn’t show the button. In any case, it’s hard to believe that no one at Bell Canada or its ad agency didn’t catch this.