August 12, 2008

Background 

Neilson Dairy has been using the images of “nurses” dressed in tight mini-dresses as part of an advertising campaign for flavoured milk. In response to these ads, RNAO President Wendy Fucile wrote a letter to Neilson Dairy on July 31, 2008 asking that the ads be removed and that Nielson’s issue a public apology to nurses. You can read RNAO’s letter here.  Julia Kovacs, Marketing Director for Neilson Dairy declined this request to remove the offensive ads on August 1, 2008. You can read Neilson Dairy’s letter here.

On August 7, 2008, RNAO issued an action alert to our members and 993 people contacted Neilson Dairy to express their concern.

On Friday, August 8, 2008, RNAO received a phone call from Julia Kovacs, Marketing Director at Neilson Dairy to say that they would work on removing the Internet images over the weekend. As of Monday, August 11, 2008, the offensive images and text were removed from their advertising campaign website. When a formal apology is received from Neilson Dairy, we will post it on the RNAO website.

Original Action Alert: RNAO urges Neilson Dairy to discontinue offensive advertising campaign (August 7, 2008)

New Update

On Wednesday, August 13, 2008, RNAO received a letter of apology from Julia Kovacs, Marketing Director at Neilson Dairy indicating that they have removed all references to nurses in the Live Ultimate promotion campaign and that they will no longer have any depictions of nurses in future material. You can read Neilson Dairy's letter here.

We would also like to thank our members and their networks for their quick response to this action alert and their overwhelming support for the nursing profession.