Pierrette Mulumba
By now you’ve recovered from the social media backlash that was Dove’s latest ad. In an effort to promote diversity, the skin-range giant was accused of encouraging black women to try and appear lighter, or in some people’s minds- whiter. Of course the brand was quick to apologize on Twitter, stating that they had missed the mark. Yes. Yes they had.
Nonetheless, the Unilever-owned brand is not the only company to landed itself in hot water over its racially insensitive adverts.
- OUTsurance celebrates Father’s Day
The insurance company OUTsurance came under fire when they released their advert celebrating Father’s Day.
The ad featured a video montage of several fathers doing numerous, positive activates with their children in honour of Father’s Day. So what was the problem? Majority of the father’s featured were white. The company was accused of misrepresenting the country’s demographics and implying that only white men made good fathers. OUTsurance apologized for the ad.
- Feed A Child tries to feed a child
Feed A Child is a charity aimed at, as the name says, feeding a child. In 2014, they released a commercial aimed at highlighting the plight of South Africa’s starving children.
Their ad showed a black child being pet and fed under the table by a rich white woman. According to the organization, the message intended was to show that the average domestic dog eats better than majority of children in the country. Of course this explanation didn’t matter and Feed A Child as well as Ogilvy & Mather soon apologized.
- Steers Big Five and the Asian
This advert wasn’t racist towards black people but it definitely played to stereotypes.
The ad sees a mixed group of foreign tourists on a game drive. One of the tourist is an Asian man. The man proceeds to claim that he has eaten each of the big five African animals.
This is an obvious play on the stereotype that Asians eat everything.
- Nando’s Diversity
Anybody who’s seen a Nando’s ad knows how the company loves to create humour in the latest controversies.
With the country being plagued by xenophobic attacks, the reastaurant chain released an ad that saw South Africa being stripped of foreigners, leaving only the Khoisan.
Although light-hearted, the ad was seen as insensitive as many people had lost their lives as a result of the xenophobic attacks.
