The tagline for MyTeksi’s Pinktober (breast cancer awareness month) campaign (#GrabitBeatit) reads, “Love Boobs? So does cancer” and it didn’t sit well with Malaysian netizens. Despite coming from the purest of intentions, netizens read the underlying message a little differently than MyTeksi had expected.
As such, netizens took to their respective social media platforms to slam the #GrabitBeatit campaign delivery, calling it out to be insensitive and misogynistic.
While it highlights Pinktober on some levels, netizens say that it undermines the seriousness of breast cancer as it has failed to reflect the real plight and suffering of many breast cancer victims and survivors. Amongst the many comments that MyTeksi has gotten from their followers, most are calling the on-demand service company sexist – disrespectful first and foremost to women and more importantly, breast cancer patients.
The #GrabitBeatit campaign is also being carried out in other countries, including Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. How does the campaign work? According to their website:
In support of breast cancer awareness, GrabCar would like to remind all ladies to perform a monthly breast self-exam. Starting 5th of October, we will also be selling our exclusive #GrabitBeatit T-shirt for RM30! On top of that, take part in our creative photo contest and stand a chance to win awesome Christy Ng flats! All sale proceeds will go to the Breast Cancer Welfare Association Malaysia, an organization that provides support to women with breast cancer. So wear it and pledge it to win it!
Don’t worry if you miss out on the delivery. You can also get the t-shirts from Pestle and Mortar stores in Bangsar Store & Penang Chapter and on their website throughout October. It’s also available on Zalora.my. Support Pink October!
MyTeksi responded a couple of hours later in a statement issued via their Twitter account. In their statement, they admitted to using taglines which were “not reflective of the seriousness of the issue” but with initial purpose to “capture the public’s attention”.
They also went on to say that they wanted to support the cause in women’s health and safety because “it is close to our hearts”.
Read their full statement below:
@faizalhamssin Hi there. We wanted to provide a detailed response to this and it's as attached. pic.twitter.com/JBm4DWvpBr
— Grab Malaysia (@GrabMY) October 7, 2015
What are your thoughts on this though? Do you think there were better ways that MyTeksi/GrabCar could’ve used to communicate the message? How do you think MyTeksi/GrabCar should’ve done this differently?
Feel free to discuss this in the comments box below.
