week 8 post 2, Body Shop ad

I catch up with 'The Local' quite often and this week there were a couple of stories that spoke to the themes I write about in this blog. The Body Shop was a store that I noticed several locations of when I started making my way to different places in Sweden. It appears the brand is very prevalent here, and is no surprise to me because it has a very sustainable and natural perception with its customers. According to the article, this poster has been displayed in store windows throughout Stockholm and the local authorities have asked the company to remove them because they are concerned about its striking similarity to the marijuana leaf. However, The Body Shop has no intention of removing the advertisements because they have said that they use industrial hemp in a lot of their products and it has nothing to do with the illegal drug. The argument is interesting because The Body Shop is interested in exposing the fact that the hemp plant is used by many companies in their products that are commonly used. It is interesting to see how much companies push the moral limit with their advertisements and which countries they do this in. In America I think this type of advertisement would be an outrage and would receive a lot of negative responses and possibly effect the companies sales. In Sweden, it is not clear yet if this is effecting sales, but it does not appear to be too big of an issue because the article was rather small and I have not seen any updates or further stories on the matter. It is interesting to consider that this international company chose Sweden to use this ad, possibly suggests that the international view of the country is that it can be laid back, less law enforcing, and more accepting of ideas that are 'on the fringe'.