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Amnesty International have apologised to Iggy Pop for using his image in their recent ad campaign without obtaining his permission. Woops.
The Belgian wing of the human rights organisation released their new anti-torture ad campaign on June 18, and it quickly went viral because of its striking content. Featuring the beaten face of Iggy Pop and the words "The future of rock 'n' roll, it's Justin Bieber", the ad was captioned: "Torture a man and he will tell you anything."
Unfortunately, it seems Amnesty forgot to do one rather important thing - obtain permission from Iggy Pop to use his image in the campaign. Although Pop has not publicly responded to the ad, Amnesty have released a statement apologising to the rocker.
"Even though we acted in good faith," the statement reads, "we would like to apologise to Iggy Pop for having done so...We would ... also like to make it clear that the statement attributed to Iggy Pop that he believes Justin Bieber is the future of rock and roll does not represent Iggy Pop's personal opinion but was part of the creative process for this campaign."
We don't think Amnesty should feel too bad - if Iggy will star in a hammy advert for car insurance, what's the problem with featuring in a campaign that focuses on one of the world's most important causes? Anyway, read Amnesty International's full statement below:
"To generate awareness about our campaign against torture, Amnesty International Belgium French speaking section used an image of Iggy Pop without his authorization.
Even though we acted in good faith, we would like to apologise to Iggy Pop for having done so.
The overall goal of this campaign is to try to influence people's ideas on the use of torture. According to surveys, a shocking number of people believe that "torture may sometimes be useful"; more than 36% of people even think that torture is justified in some cases. This is unacceptable, and we illustrate this reality with the message that a man who is tortured will say anything in order to escape this awfulness, using provocative images and statements to attract public attention. We would therefore also like to make it clear that the statement attributed to Iggy Pop that he believes Justin Bieber is the future of rock and roll does not represent Iggy Pop's personal opinion but was part of the creative process for this campaign and was intended to be ironic. The image has been removed.
For the launch of our latest campaign against torture, the image of His Holiness the Dalai Lama was used by our section (Belgium french speaking) and was widely shared on the internet. Although the Dalai Lama was not the target of the campaign, we understand that this image has caused particular concern in some quarters. We have therefore chosen to remove this picture from our digital material in order not to cause any furtherupset and ensure people’s attention remains focused on the real aim of this campaign: to stop torture.
We apologise for any upset caused by this image."
