A screenshot from the controversial advertisement. The Estonian Food Industry Association said the advertisement was not intended to offend, but merely to promote rapeseed oil.

TALLINN — The Estonian Food Industry Association is being criticized for running an advertisement in which people dressed in costumes similar to those of the Ku Klux Klan promote local rapeseed oil.

The ad campaign, which is produced by the Kontuur advertising agency and authored by the agency’s creative director Henri Jääger, consists of TV commercial and print fliers placed on the rapeseed oil bottles. In the ad, the actors are wearing yellow Ku Klux Klan robes and if that wasn’t enough to stoke the flames of controversy, some are saying that on the print ad the lit-up bottle resembles a dildo than a rape oil bottle.

Now the association is in damage control mode. On Monday, Sirje Potissepp, the Estonian Food Industry Association director explained to Channel 2’s “Reporter” that the ad campaign’s intention was not to insult people and it was not made with racist intent.

In a press release Tuesday the association apologized about the campaign and attempted to explain its true intent.

“Insulting someone was not our intention, and we apologize if we have done that,” the statement reads.

The association insisted that the campaign’s intention is to inform the public about the advantages of domestic rapeseed oil.

“Religious sects, who had their own brotherhoods, clothing, and rituals, have been the best at keeping secrets throughout the history,” the association said. “The campaign’s name ‘Sect’s Secret’ was chosen in the light of the secret’s aspect, and the secret sect of domestic rape oil philosophers are represented as the fantasy characters.”

The association admits that they “failed to foresee that the hooded dress relates as clearly only to the despicable acts of Ku Klux Klan not to a secret sect in general nor European carnival culture.”

According to Jääger, the costume idea came from the annual Semana Santa festival celebrated in Seville, Spain where 55 associations of Catholic laypersons take part of the rites wearing the same tip-hooded robes with eye-gaps cut in. They were not inspired by the costumes of the racist U.S. right-wing extremist group, he said.

“The feedback has been that people, who only know about the Ku Klux Klan wearing white cones have pulled up a scandal,” Jääger told Baltic Reports adding that those who know more about European cultures understand where the hoods came from.

Jääger opined that “it would not do any harm, if people would learn more about the culture of our home land, the European Union.”

Jääger also said that he was satisfied that the ad was receiving so much attention, perhaps slyly acknowledging that the controversy was intended.

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