French Newspaper Ad Exploits 9/11 Terror Attacks

(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - It's becoming routine: Another anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaches, another controversial ad appears using imagery from the tragedy.

This time, French newspaper Courrier International is running an advertisement for the paper suggesting that 9/11 could have been avoided if the Twin Towers had been shorter.

The ad shows planes flying above significantly shorter Twin Towers ’ perhaps half their actual height ’ with the headline "Learn to anticipate."

The website Ads of the World reported that Saatchi & Saatchi France is the agency behind the ad.

The Montreal Gazette reported that the campaign is an attempt to imply that the newspaper's coverage will help readers anticipate major events.

The 9/11 terror attack are only one of the events used in the promotion. The campaign also uses the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy and the 1969 moon landing.

Many who have posted comments about the ad on various websites are upset about its insensitivity.

"Stupid beyond belief. There will NEVER be a right time to reference 9/11 in advertising," reads one comment on the website AdFreak.com ."Oooh, I know, perhaps the Saatchi creatives could do one on the deportation of gypsies from their country," quipped another post on the site.

This is not the first time provocative 9/11 imagery has been used in an ad.

Last year, WWF Brazil and DDB Brazil drew fire for an ad they created for World Wildlife Fund Brazil that showed hundreds of planes heading for lower Manhattan. The ad read, "The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it."

After outrage from many sides, the firms backpedaled and apologized for the ad.

"The level of mega-stupidity the entire scenario has achieved, and the embarrassing and tortured apologies and backpedaling by agency and client, created a vortex that could swallow up half the Earth," Barbara Lipper wrote of the 2009 ad for a column in Adweek .