Do You Find The Air New Zealand "Cougar Pride" Ad Funny Or Offensive?

Apparently the Cougar is becoming a  target market for the travel industry.  There was and is the cougar cruise pairing older women with their younger "cubs." And this month Air New Zealand promoted the Grab A Seat bargain site with “Cougar Pride“. 

The Cougar Pride contest was promoted in December 2009 and January 2010 with a commercial supplying  a commentary on the behavior of the Cougars and their impact on the young single male population in the city  of New Zealand.  The Air New Zealand, Grab as eat, encouraged women 35-plus to send in photographs of themselves out on the town with their younger "Cougar Mates" who had to be at least 10 years younger. The women were then entered into a drawing for a free flight and tickets to next month's Wellington Sevens rugby tournament. Many women entered showing their "Cougar Pride" according to the news.

 Unfortunately the Air New Zealand advertisement portraying older single women as man-hungry "cougars" who troll bars for fresh "meat" has sparked outrage, particularly among rape prevention groups in New Zealand. The narrator describes a cougar as "starving itself on sparse vegetation during the day then hunting large slabs of meat at night" by seeking out young men at a bar. And the narrator goes further to by saying the cougar,  hasn't "tasted fresh meat for days," and will eventually pounce and drag her young male prey back to her apartment "where it will cruelly be made to listen to "the Eurythmics or Enya."


Do You find The Cougar' ad  Funny or offensive?

Do think we will see a tamer Travel Industry version of this in the USA ?

Obviously this would not be a good tie in promotion for Virgin Atlantic Airline.