The study, which earned a few column inches in the Sun and Daily Mail, said nine out of 10 women in PR, advertising and marketing are likely to cancel dating plans.
Women in Southampton were the 'worst offenders', followed by PR workers in London and Leeds, blaming an ‘emergency crisis’ for the ‘no shows’.
Mastercard Europe’s director of communications Alice Caldwell slammed the research on Twitter, arguing that women in PR already have enough to deal with it.
She added: "First of all it’s an awful story based on nonsense doing nothing for Stella. Second of all, did the clocks go back to the 90s?".
Grayling UK head of consumer PR Kat McGettigan said the industry was already fighting an uphill battle to be taken seriously and the research made PR professionals look like ‘flakey Ab Fab PR types’.
I totally agree with @caldwelljunior on this - as an industry we are already fighting an uphill task to be taken seriously and this takes us back to looking like flakey #ABFAB pr types - thoughts @WIPRUK @prweekuknews and general brilliant #prwomen #pr https://t.co/MTiJ0XnKFf
— kat mcgettigan (@katmcgettigan) October 29, 2018
Rachel Millington, the head of social and PR at creative agency Red Brick Road, agreed, adding: ‘kind of hoped we’d moved on from this shit’.
She said what the research really proved was: ‘Women who work in PR more interested in their career than dating f*ckboys who drink Stella’.
Women in PR simply tweeted ‘no words’ next to an unhappy emoji in response to the release, while co-founder of The Romans Joe Sinclair asked whoever was responsible for the campaign to reveal themselves.
?? no words
— WIPRUK (@WIPRUK) 30 October 2018
Own up lads, who wrote this release? pic.twitter.com/fX804DZEs8
— Joe Mackay-Sinclair (@AlpineJoeJoe) 29 October 2018
The beer brand, which has anecdotally been known in the UK as ‘wife beater’ in part because of its high alcohol content, has spent years refining its image as an upmarket Belgian beer brand.
According to an Independent article in 2012, Stella Artois hired Portland to help clean it up the ‘wife beater’ image.
Stella Artois has also moved into cider to broaden its appeal to non-beer drinking audiences.
PRWeek approached Stella Artois' PR agency 3 Monkeys for comment.
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