Summary: Dove has recently released a body wash advertisement that people aren’t happy about. The short gif shows a black woman removing her dark brown T-shirt only for a white woman to appear wearing a white T-shirt and so one with another woman. The company has taken down the ad and apologized for the way it hurt some people. Apparently Dove has done something similar in the past with their lotion advertising that represents darker woman as ashy.
Synthesis: This is similar to the Pepsi commercial featuring Kendall Jenner that was pulled due to the way they “missed the mark”. In the commercial, Kendall Jenner leaves her photo shoot to join a protest outside and upon giving the officer a Pepsi, everything is magically resolved. People claimed this commercial downplayed the black lives matter movement. Just as the Dove advertisements are racist because of the way they use women of color in their commercials.
Analysis: I think that companies need to really be careful of how they construct their advertisements. If you’re trying to appear to the people, it would be wise to appeal to everyone and not make the audience feel offended in any way. I don’t understand how companies claim to “miss the mark” when the issue depicted is obvious. The fact that ideas like these even go through their head is unreasonable for people who work to sell items to others. The industry needs to look at the bigger picture and actually fix these problems. I hope that advertisers will start to use their platform to send a positive message rather than offend people.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/05/media/pepsi-kendall-jenner-tone-deaf-ads/index.html
I do think that the way they went about this could've been a WHOLE lot better, however, Dove is a big advocate for feminism and diversity. A lot of their ads include women of all backgrounds, ethnicities and body types. I think this was poorly done, but not with ill intent.
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