Situation
On October 9th, 2017, an advertisement from the soap company, Dove has surfaced on the internet which was spreading around Facebook. The advertisement was showing off its new cleanser in action and several women with different skin tones were in that commercial. The advertisement was not very pleasant to most people. There was one part of the dove advertisement that has got people furious and thinking if Dove was being racist; A black woman was transitioning into a white woman when taking her shirt off. People got upset when they saw that specific part of the ad in there.
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| Source: www.thealternativedaily.com This was the specific clip of the Dove ad which sparked a lot of controversy starting on facebook and then all over other social media platforms and news. |
In an article from Huffington Post, the Black model in the advertisement, Lola Ogunyemi addressed the situation by stating "I am not a victim; I am strong, I am beautiful, and I will not be erased." Additionally, Lola states that the reason why she wanted to be in this dove advertisement is because she wanted to represent a woman of colour for all around the world and the campaign's objective inspired her to join this advertisement.
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| Source: www.classic105.com Lola Ogunyemi, the model pictured above was the one that was in the Dove advertisement and responded to the backlash Dove has got for its racist appealing ad. |
My Response
It is so interesting how one single commercial can cause a lot of controversy. This is because of the fact that some companies/brands might not know if the advertisement would be appropriate and or offend a single person, race, or religion. When it comes to advertising products or PSAs, we need to be cautious about who is being targeted whether its young children, teenagers, adults, seniors, etc. We need to make sure that our message/campaign can go through safely and have no problems what so ever without having to offend anyone that is affected by this. As for Dove, they messed up on this part. Dove didn't realize how wrong this decision in the ad would be where the black woman transitions into a white woman. This kind of situation was also used back in the old days when they would advertise soaping products. The controversy of that situation was not too big of a deal compared to now. All I got to say is to be careful of what you are advertising and think about the people around you when making an advertisement so that they can think that your message/campaign would be appropriate to them and that it wouldn't offend anybody. That way, we can get through and be happy of what the advertisement is telling us and that we can get along with everyone in the world. This concludes my response to the Dove ad controversy.
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| Source: www.thoughtcatalog.com The company, Pears' Soap has used this kind of ad marketing before and it had the same backlash like the Dove ad in terms of racism except that the black boy that is being cleaned by the white boy turns white as seen in the second picture frame. |
When you said that "it is interesting how one single comment can cause a lot of controversy" and in modern time, I can agree with you that it is indeed surprising. Nowadays, one thing can cause so much trouble especially on the Internet. One truly has to be careful of what one says on the Internet. One sentence can offend so many people so it is vital to be cautious when commenting on the Internet. It applies in the Dove ad where they had one thing happen in the ad intending to promote products and self-confidence but turned out to offend others.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with your statements quite strongly. Dove's intentions were to never make a racist advertisement/commercial. Why would they ever want to hurt their own reputation and sales for what? publicity? Dove when dealing in this kind of market need to be careful when creating commercials and advertisements. People on the internet love to search for thing that are "offensive". In this day and age people find everything extremely offensive.I feel that most hate comes from people that aren't even offended by this. They see it and feel that they should be offended but it has nothing to do with them at all.
ReplyDelete