We have no words.
It’s 2015 and an ad targeted at working mums has been printed and distributed for a Real Estate Agent. It… just… no.
The offending ad is here. Take a breath and count to ten before looking because it is infuriating:
A Real Estate Agent in Washington called Costello and Costello Real Estate Group created an ad asking who you would prefer to represent you. The two options were: "Part Time Agent" (aka a working mum) versus, "Full Time Professionals" (aka two men in suits).
The two men representing the full time professionals are Chase and Jeffrey Costello. The men said their hope with the ad was to, "show the value of having a full-time agent in a competitive market."
And so of course you would never want a mother to represent you because they could never give you the same quality of work or time as a man in a suit *insert sarcasm here*.
But in all honestly, we'd probably prefer the working mum to represent us. She can multitask, she has empathy for others and she would have impeccable time management and organisational skills. Plus would never consider creating an ad that suggested men were inferior to her because they couldn't juggle the same amount as she does.
But Karma won out in the end. The ad has completely backfired and these men have (hopefully) learned their lesson.
KiroTV news said that the Real Estate Group received a lot of phone calls and comments about the ad. In fact, there were so many they were forced to issue an apology to KIRO 7 News and well as post one on their Facebook page (the page has since been removed).
The men wrote:
There are thousands of professional agents working in our area who are also dedicated mothers, including several members of our team. Our original hope with this message was to show the value of having a full-time agent in a competitive market, but we completely failed. We have the utmost respect for mums and working mothers, and we know that the job of a mother is far more demanding than what we do as real estate professionals. Again, we are truly sorry. - Costello and Costello Real Estate.
Maybe next time, get one of your many working mothers to have a look over your ad ideas guys. Because this is Mad Men era stuff and we're in 2015. Not okay.
Do you think the ad should've been allowed to go to print?
