HAIN LETTER OF PROTEST AGAINST OFFENSIVE LIQUOR AD

We, individuals from women’s organizations, other civil society groups, and mainstream,
community-based and government media, protest the blatant sexism of the most recent billboard
and radio advertisements of Napoleon Quince, a liquor brand.

The billboards are on the intersection of EDSA and Timog Avenue in Quezon City, and on EDSA-
Guadalupe, prime billboard locations both, due to the daily heavy vehicular and human traffic
passing the said areas daily. Thus, the covert demeaning message it conveys is highly visible for all to
see.

The radio ads, on the other hand, are aired on the primetime programs of top-rating AM stations.

The main selling point of Napoleon Quince is that it is supposedly aged for 15 years. The tagline is a
disgusting “Nakatikim ka na ba ng kinse años?” (Have you ever tasted a 15 year-old?), which was
clearly coined for its sexual, if criminal, undertones. The tagline demeans women and girls, not only
perpetrating the archaic view of women as sex objects or as commodities to be sampled or tasted; it
in fact encourages statutory rape and other abuses on minors. Destileria Limtuaco and Co. Inc.,
together with its sister marketing company Convoy Marketing Corporation and Sinson Lascano
Group, the advertising agency that conceptualized, executed and makes the media placements of
the ad, should realize that such sexism is an abomination that should end.

In a recent television news report, the defense of a representative of Destileria Limtuaco and Co.
Inc., maker of Napoleon Quince, is that its advertisement of this brandy is not demeaning to women
as it does not even carry photos of women. Destileria Limtuaco insists it just wants to highlight its
being the sole local liquor manufacturer to supply 15-year-aged brandy. And, as no double meaning
was intended, the company has no plans of pulling out the ad.

We say nonsense! The tagline was precisely coined in the context of the frequent association of
liquor with women, of liquor with sex, of liquor with power. With its duplicitous reasoning, Destileria
Limtuaco is suggesting we are all idiots unable to discern double entendre and the depravity of its
ad’s message.

These reasons were again reiterated in a press conference held by Destileria Limtuaco last 09 March
2004, four days after they received the cease and desist order of Adboard to pull out the offensive
ads. Destileria Limtuaco and Convoy Marketing, in turn, filed a case against Adboard and its
executive director, Oscar T. Valenzuela, for releasing this pullout order and insisted that Adboard is
not a legitimate governing body to order such a procedure, eliminating their right to a “due process”
by making this “despotic act.” Destileria Limtuaco’s spokesperson, Atty. Bonifacio Alentajan, stated
that women’s organizations who first spoke against Napoleon Quince are only using this “campaign”
as media mileage for their political partylists, referring to GABRIELA and its Congressional
representative Lisa Masa. Atty. Alentajan said that groups such as this, along with the National
Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW), should “busy themselves in women’s concerns
like wife battery, abuse and the Japayukis, and leave alone companies like Destileria running their
businesses honestly.” He also said that if their ads appear malicious to these women’s groups, then
the groups are the ones with “dirty and malicious minds” by having that kind of reading.

We demand the total withdrawal of the offensive Napoleon Quince advertisement on print and
broadcast. We call on the regulatory agency of the advertising industry, the Advertising Board of the
Philippines (Adboard), to be more vigilant against the lack of decency and ethics of such advertisers
as Destileria Limtuaco and its advertising partner, Sinson Lascano Group. The two companies’
continued refusal to dismantle the billboards in spite of the Adboard’s order for this belies their
complete belligerence, for which they must be further sanctioned. We also call on the Outdoor
Advertising Association of the Philippines (OAAP) to exercise strict monitoring of the content of
billboards displayed in public.