ENLARGE Photo: Twitter 
 
 Bloomingdale’s, the luxury department store owned by Macy’s Inc., M 0.79 % is the latest advertiser to face an outpouring of criticism on the Web. 
 
 Consumers have taken to social media this week to criticize an ad in Bloomingdale’s holiday catalog that some interpreted as encouraging date rape. 
 
 The ad features a woman laughing with her head turned as a young man looks her way. The text reads: “Spike Your Best Friend’s Eggnog When They’re Not Looking.” 
 
 There have been 3,868 comments on social media channels over the last 48 hours about the ad, according to data from social media analytics firm Networked Insights. The majority of the comments, Networked Insights said, are negative. Data shows that many of the online commentators have called the ad “creepy.” 
 
 Bloomingdale’s has apologized for the ad. “In reflection of recent feedback, the copy we used in our current catalog was inappropriate and in poor taste. Bloomingdale’s sincerely apologizes for this error in judgment,” said the company in a statement. 
 
 It’s unclear what the intention of the ad was, but branding experts say that marketers are under pressure to stand out amid the ever-increasing amount of advertising messages that consumers are being bombarded with every day. And even more is at stake heading into the all-important holiday shopping season. 
 
 “Marketers have to work harder to get attention nowadays, but the more they try, the riskier it becomes,” said Jonah Disend, chief executive officer of Redscout, a branding firm owned by MDC Partners. 
 
 Bloomingdale’s is the latest company to see how quickly controversy can spread thanks in part to social media. Earlier this week, consumers took to social media to complain about Starbuck’s new red holiday cups or to vent about the fact there was even a controversy. 
 
 Write to Suzanne Vranica at suzanne.vranica@wsj.com ||||| Internet pop artist Austin Jones was charged in federal court in Chicago on Tuesday with child pornography after allegedly coercing two underage female fans to send him sexually explicit videos. 
 
 Jones, 24, of west suburban Bloomingdale, faces two felony counts of production of child pornography. Each count carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years behind bars if convicted. 
 
 Jones' original songs and covers of popular teen artists have earned him a huge online following. His YouTube channel has more than 500,000 subscribers, and some of his videos have received more than 1 million views. 
 
 A criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday alleged Jones had online conversations with two 14-year-old female fans in which he encouraged them to send him sexually explicit videos of themselves, including dozens of images of them performing graphic sexual acts. 
 
 In one chat last month, Jones told one girl — identified as Victim A — to dance in a sexually suggestive manner and "make it clap super loud and talk about your age the whole time," according to the complaint. 
 
 Last year, Jones told the other girl — Victim B — in a Facebook chat that she was "so lucky" to have his attention and needed to "prove" she was his biggest fan, according to the complaint. At one point, he instructed her to remove her underwear. 
 
 "I'm just trying to help you!" he wrote, according to the complaint. "I know you're trying your hardest to prove you're my biggest fan. And I don't want to have to find someone else." 
 
 YouTube Internet pop artist Austin Jones, 24, of west suburban Bloomingdale, faces two felony counts of production of child pornography, court records show. Internet pop artist Austin Jones, 24, of west suburban Bloomingdale, faces two felony counts of production of child pornography, court records show. (YouTube) (YouTube) 
 
 The conversations showed both girls appeared hesitant as Jones asked them to perform increasingly explicit dances. 
 
 At one point, Victim A told Jones her mom was "a little overprotective" and that she was tired and wanted to stop, according to the complaint. When Jones asked Victim B if she knew how to do one particularly vulgar move, she wrote back, "Okay lol and no." 
 
 Jones was arrested Monday evening after landing at O'Hare International Airport, prosecutors said. He was led into U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Mason's courtroom Tuesday dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit with a solemn expression on his face, staring at the floor as prosecutors read aloud the charges and possible penalties. 
 
 Mason ordered Jones held pending a detention hearing Wednesday. 
 
 The charges come two years after Jones was caught up in a social media firestorm over accusations that he had young fans send him inappropriate videos of themselves "twerking," a suggestive dance move made famous by pop star Miley Cyrus. 
 
 After Jones was blasted online, he posted a lengthy YouTube video apologizing to the girls he'd asked to send videos, although he said the videos never crossed any sexual lines. 
 
 "I shouldn't have asked you to do that ... it was foolish of me," Jones said in the 16-minute video posted in June 2016. "But there were never any nudes, never any physical contact. It never happened." 
 
 Jones said he was an "insecure person" and grew suicidal after receiving death threats over the controversy. He was hospitalized and took a hiatus from touring and social media, he said. 
 
 But his career seemed rejuvenated recently. Just days ago, he was tweeting photos of rabid fans from his first tour of Europe, including shows in Germany and Poland. 
 
 In the last tweet before his arrest, Jones on Sunday sent a photo of fans from his latest show. "I have honestly never felt so alive," he wrote on the post. 
 
 jmeisner@chicagotribune.com 
 
 Twitter @jmetr22b ||||| The ad for Gap’s latest collaboration with Ellen DeGeneres is awash with pleasing blue hues, from the kid models’ navy outfits to the talk show host’s denim jacket. 
 
 But the shades that really caught people’s attention were on the children’s skin. The commercial’s stars were three white girls and a black girl. 
 
 That, in itself, wasn’t a problem. In the days following the campaign’s launch last week, what drew ire from commentators online was the seeming passivity of the African American girl. While the other girls eagerly fielded DeGeneres’s questions about their troupe “Le Petite Cirque,” she sat silent. While the white girls were highlighted performing solo acrobatic tricks, she seemed to appear only in reference to the others — balancing on someone’s knees or with her arm wrapped around someone’s waist. 
 
 At least, this was the interpretation of those who were angered by the ad. And they were angered, most of all, by a photograph that showed the white girls standing in all manner of complex poses while the black girl’s arms dangled idly at her sides, her head a cushion upon which another white girl rested an elbow. 
 
 This imagery sparked the usual chain of reactions online. Those who were offended minced no words in expressing their outrage, and they were promptly reprimanded by those who thought they were overreacting. 
 
 Many critics zeroed in on the caption Gap had used to introduce the campaign: “Meet the kids who are proving that girls can do anything.” 
 
 So @Gap decides to use the only Black girl in this campaign as a prop…..we see you! pic.twitter.com/widB8Axk5U — Introverted Bama (@Sneaker1984) April 3, 2016 
 
 That ad certainly isn't suggesting that *black* girls "can do anything," @GapKids. It's incredibly distasteful to your black consumer base. — stacia l. brown (@slb79) April 3, 2016 
 
 The Root’s Kirsten West Savali articulated the essence of the distress: “While all of the girls are adorable, and indeed, all of them should grow up to be and do anything, it becomes problematic when the black child is positioned to be a white child’s prop.” 
 
 The company apologized Tuesday. 
 
 “As a brand with a proud 46 year history of championing diversity and inclusivity, we appreciate the conversation that has taken place and are sorry to anyone we’ve offended,” Gap spokeswoman Debbie Felix said in a statement to Fortune. 
 
 The offensive image will be removed, but the campaign will move forward, the company said. 
 
 Was seeing the black child as a prop too far-reaching a conclusion to draw? Not so, Savali argued, when there is a history of “‘passive racism’ masquerading as cosmetic diversity” in advertising. She pointed to a 2014 story about Russian art gallery owner Dasha Zhukova that pictured Zhukova sitting in a chair realistically sculpted to look like a half-naked black woman with her legs in the air. 
 
 While the chair itself was designed to be a commentary on gender and racial politics, the image of Zhukova sitting atop the black woman, without any context, was troubling. With Zhukova clad in a white blouse and framed by creamy light, the photo seemed to reinforce the notion that black women were sexually depraved. 
 
 Savali pointed out that the Gap ad “shows how early that positioning begins.” 
 
 Other African Americans disagreed with this interpretation. “There is so much more in the community to be worried about,” said one Twitter user. Matthew Cherry, a black filmmaker, invited people to consider an ad from last year’s campaign for the same line, which shows the racial composition of the controversial pose reversed — with a black girl resting her arm atop of the head of a white girl. 
 
 Does the @GapKids pic on the left make the pic on the right okay? Let's debate pic.twitter.com/rCFbK4uG5y — Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) April 3, 2016 
 
 As Zeba Blay wrote in The Huffington Post, this kind of discussion is always “tricky.” 
 
 “I found the pose to be pretty harmless,” Blay said. “And yet, it’s unfair to say that the people who do take issue with the photo are simply overreacting. Because it’s not the pose itself that is the problem, but the context in which it is delivered. The context being: an advertisement, with all the conscious and unconscious messaging that images used to sell an idea tend to entail.” 
 
 To add one final twist to the controversy, it turns out that the black girl and the white girl in question are sisters. 
 
 They are the daughters of actress Brooke Smith, of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Silence of the Lambs” fame. The white girl, 12-year-old Fanny Grace Lubensky, is Smith’s biological child. Smith and her husband, Russian cinematographer Steve Lubensky, adopted 9-year-old Lucy Dinknesh Lubensky from Ethiopia in 2008. 
 
 The actress seemed weary of the scrutiny when addressing it on Twitter. Lucy didn’t talk in the video because she was “too shy,” Smith said. “Everyone needs to calm down.” 
 
 @TheRoot girl with arm resting on her shoulder is her sister She didn't talk in video because she was 2 shy. everyone needs to calm down. — Brooke Smith (@Iam_BrookeSmith) April 3, 2016 
 
 The snafu is just one example of companies inadvertently producing their own public relations calamities. During the last holiday season, Bloomingdale’s had to apologize for an ad that seemed to encourage date rape. 
 
 “Spike your best friend’s egg nog when they’re not looking,” read the caption on an image of a suited man leering at woman turned away from him. It recalled a similarly distasteful Bud Light bottle label from April of last year: “The perfect beer for removing ‘No’ from your vocabulary for the night. #UpForWhatever.” 
 
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– "Bloomingdale's must be pleased everyone is too distracted by red cups to notice its pro-roofie holiday ad," tweets one Washington Post writer. That's right, another company has found itself in some holiday hot water this week. The Wall Street Journal reports the Internet is in an uproar over an ad in the Bloomingdale's holiday catalog that appears to encourage date rape. The offending ad shows a laughing woman looking away as a man stares intently at her. The text reads: "Spike Your Best Friend's Eggnog When They're Not Looking." A social analytics firm found thousands of online comments made about the ad, mostly negative with the majority opinion apparently being "creepy." "Someone at Bloomingdale’s thought this ad was smart," a Mashable executive tweets. "I assume that person has been fired." But it's not just the Internet that has a problem with Bloomingdale's ad. "What is this? Some kind of business function they’re attending? This is the way we’re going to treat women in the workplace?” a gender studies professor tells the Post. “It’s sending the message that it is it okay to have sex with people who are incapable of consent." "I doubt the person who created this was consciously thinking about sexual assault," another expert says. "Male or female, whoever it was who came up with this—and the many people who okayed it—just don't get it." Bloomingdale's apologized for the ad in the wake of the uproar. “In reflection of recent feedback, the copy we used in our current catalog was inappropriate and in poor taste," the Journal quotes a company statement. "Bloomingdale’s sincerely apologizes for this error in judgment."