Most modern advertisements are made for the purpose to target a certain consumer. It could be for the rich or the poor, for women or men and even for the color of your skin. What ever the reason, you have a target on your back. It is a simple concept, if Mountain Dew isn't selling enough to blacks, they will start targeting them in order to get them to purchase their product.There is nothing wrong with a company targeting a certain minority group in order to maximize profitability. How they go about making the advertisement lies the problem. They cannot throw stereotypes in their ad because this will inevitably harm their companies image. And as I discussed in a previous blog, your image is your brand and your brand is everything to you and all stakeholders. Stereotyping or being racist was a huge problem in early advertising. Many people believe it was because we were naive, and that we didn't know any better. Well now we do know better. Right? No way we still have racist ads in 2012... Well we do. For example, NIVEA a home care product recently targeted blacks in order to sell more products. The problem is that they obviously placed a stereotype on blacks. Here is the ad.
The ad says "re-civilize yourself" and shows a "clean cut black" getting rid of the of an "uncivilized black." This is extremely racist. First of all, it is giving the stereotype that all blacks have afros. In addtion, it says that if you do have an afro that you are not civilized? The company did have this statement, "This ad was inappropriate and offensive. It was never our intention to offend anyone, and for this we are deeply sorry. This ad will never be used again." Are they really sorry or are they sorry that they got caught? I would like to think that their advertisement team and top management are smart enough to figure out that this ad is racist. These companies need to think about what they're doing. This could ruin your company. Your goal was to "get more black customers", but you just smacked them in the face to do it. If someone from craigslist smacked me in the face before purchase I wouldn't buy from them.
Racism can be fixed. Will it ever be totally fixed? Probably not, but we can minimize it. Advertisements that are non-racial will help us in this pursuit.
great example, Brad, and a good post. you're right to question the Nivea ad as the combination of copy and image is very unfortunate. How do you think issues like these can be avoided?
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