A viral video featuring
men in their underwear washing a Camaro -- which was
yanked by General Motors Wednesday
morning -- was not vetted through all departments of the
company, Travis Parman, who handles LGBT media relations for
GM, told Advocate.com Wednesday.
The video was filmed to
promote "Gay Days at the Movies," a GM-coordinated event in
Los Angeles for the new
Transformers
film, and was created by General Motors' LGBT outreach
group.
In the video, two men
wearing Bumblebee underwear with C-A-M-A-R-O spelled out on the
back are seen washing a Camaro.
"Our LGBT outreach
group did just some grassroots, viral, simple videos to promote
the event itself," Parman said. But the video didn't go
through an additional approval process before hitting the
Web.
Most videos that make
it to the Web without being approved by corporate might simply
be branded unauthorized and yanked. But GM issued a statement
saying this "was not the way we wanted to represent" the
Camaro brand, adding that it was not done "in good
taste" before ordering that the videos be
removed.
"Our LGBT group who
normally handles this thing is the group who did it, so we
didn't want to shy away from that responsibility," Parman
said. "But it had not been vetted through every single
group."
Parman said had the
video been vetted through every department at GM, "it
probably never would have been posted."
GM is a longtime
advertiser in gay media and has previously advertised in
The Advocate
.
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