Heineken Doesn't Seem To Realize Women Drink Beer, Too

Heineken Doesn't Seem To Realize Women Drink Beer, Too

Heineken seems to have a problem with women.

On Saturday, the Dutch beer maker upset female sports fans -- and women in general -- when it aired a TV spot in Brazil encouraging women to go shoe shopping during the European championship soccer game between Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid. The ad, which was made in partnership with the shoe store Shoestock, offered women a 50 percent discount on shoes during the game.

The ad here is in Portuguese, but the message rings pretty clear no matter what language you speak:

“The idea is to help guarantee men time to watch the game on Saturday afternoon,” Wieden + Kennedy creative director Otavio Schiavon, whose agency was behind the ad, told AdWeek. “So we’re going to provide an argument that will make it so their wives or girlfriends have something interesting to do during the game.”

A spokeswoman for the agency's New York office did not immediately respond to a call from The Huffington Post seeking comment. Heineken did not immediately respond, either.

The ad was widely panned as sexist.

Translation: "The macho idiot who created the Heineken campaign forgot that women also drink beer and watch football."

Such criticism is nothing new to Heineken. One prominent advertising critic called this 2007 Heineken ad for the mini-keg “arguably the most sexist beer commercial ever produced.” The spot, which aired in the U.S., depicts a female robot sporting a 1920s flapper bob producing a keg of beer from her stomach.

In 2009, a Dutch ad for the beer showed a group of women shrieking with delight when they enter a closet filled with an array of high-heeled shoes. Next door, a similar group of men out-shout them when they find the same-sized closet outfitted as a refrigerator filled with bottles of beer.

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