'This Made Me Physically Recoil From My Phone': Lingerie Brand Apologizes For 'Creepy' Ad Referencing Ryan Reynolds and Bras Online lingerie retailer Harper Wilde is under fire for a bizarre sponsored post it has since pulled from Instagram.
By Emily Rella Edited by Jessica Thomas
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
That's certainly one way to go about selling intimate apparel.
Lingerie brand Harper Wilde is apologizing for an extremely uncomfortable sponsored post on Instagram that compared the comfort level of its bras to being touched by actor Ryan Reynolds.
Related: 8 Controversial Marketing Campaigns That Paid Off
One user shared a screenshot of the ad on Twitter, where it's been viewed more than 1.3 million times.
???? pic.twitter.com/uILFuFNOwW
— Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) January 27, 2023
"This bra is like if Ryan Reynolds was gently holding up your breasts and whispering in your ear that you are doing a good job…honestly," the text read, with no photo or other reference to the Deadpool star anywhere in the advertisement or on the company's website.
Twitter users had a field day with the copy, with many making references to other actors and others calling the word choice "creepy" and noting how uncomfortable it made them.
they've done it. I'm officially terrified of underwear now
— Adriana Porter Felt (@__apf__) January 28, 2023
This actually frightened me
— Maddy Eisenberg (@maddyeisenberg) January 27, 2023
you cannot convince me a woman wrote this
— katie dyer (@kegelsandlox) January 27, 2023
This made me physically recoil from my phone.
— Katie (@KatieAlbitz) January 27, 2023
wow the opposite of a selling point
— Magna Tolvan (@Magna_Tolvan) January 27, 2023
Unable to ignore the heat, Harper Wilde responded in a series of Tweets explaining that the ad was not written by its team, but was instead a direct quote from a customer review that the company believed was "cheeky" enough to run on its own. A Tweet noted that the attribution to the customer had been cut off by Instagram's ad interface.
2. Our team is 99% women and we absolutely do NOT condone creepy non-consensual boob-grabbing of any kind, even in the figurative hypothetical bra-review sense. We're very very sorry this creeped anyone out! It was absolutely not our intention, and we've pulled the ad.
— Harper Wilde (@harperwilde) January 28, 2023
"Our team is 99% women and we absolutely do NOT condone creepy non-consensual boob-grabbing of any kind, even in the figurative hypothetical bra-review sense," the company wrote. "We're very very sorry this creeped anyone out! It was absolutely not our intention, and we've pulled the ad."
Harper Wilde then joked that perhaps the reviewer (signed "Kelly D") meant to mention actor Ryan Gosling instead of Ryan Reynolds.
"A significant part of our customer demographic is the elder millennial Ryan Reynolds fan — we apologize if this unexpectedly teleported you back to 2017," the company cheekily wrote.
Harper Wilde is an online retailer founded in 2016 that specializes in bras and other lingerie products.
Unsurprisingly, Ryan Reynolds has not yet commented on the ad controversy.
Related: How Ryan Reynolds' Marketing Agency Keeps Making Viral Hits
