Yesterday a conversation started with a simple question directed at ZOL:
@ZOLconnect why assume women access internet for fashion+gossip, men for sports+business? Nxaa! @Techzim @EconetZim pic.twitter.com/2tOman9XYU
— Rebecca Zeigler Mano (@RebZMano) October 19, 2014
One by one people joined in and expressed their thoughts about the advert and ZOL‘s choice of words. Initially ZOL seemed to defend its position with tweets like this one:
@RebZMano @dubbydacious @263Chat @deltandou we did not make assumptions but based our ad on research that had been done.
— ZOL Zimbabwe (@ZOLconnect) October 19, 2014
…and this one:
@deltandou @RebZMano @dubbydacious @263Chat it's not to say that all men and women are like that but this is based on established trends
— ZOL Zimbabwe (@ZOLconnect) October 19, 2014
The continued discussion on the issue finally led to ZOL’s final tweet (an apology):
We would like to apologise to all who found our advert offensive. The intent was not to stereotype genders.
— ZOL Zimbabwe (@ZOLconnect) October 19, 2014
The link to the tweets between @ZOLConnect and various people is found
https://storify.com/263Chat/reaction-to-zolconnect-s-newspaper-advert” target=”_blank”>HERE.
All it took was a couple of tweets by a determined group of people to get an apology from ZOL. Thank you ZOL.
Will the offensive advert be withdrawn as well we wonder?
