The controversial dove ad
 

The issue:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/08/b...ad-racist.html

The model comments:

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...d-not-a-victim

Khanyi Mbau comments:

https://www.timeslive.co.za/tshisa-l...t-dove-advert/

Three links to read. What do you think is it dreadful racism or over reacting?
Why is it offensive for a black girl to turn into a white girl but not offensive for a white girl to turn into an Asian girl? What's your view?

Proper racism close them down

Did a white girl turn into an Asian girl in one of your linked articles? Cba to open them as I've heard about the Dove thing

But yeah, I can't see how the advert got cleared. Even if it wasn't meant to be racist, how did anyone possibly think it was appropriate for television?

Yes that was one of the reasons I posted the last article it has the full ad.

because it's not a "thing" like black being dirty is I suppose.

Because they are basically saying black people are dirty and with a bit of soap will come up white

The "changing-shirt-becoming-someone-else" FX is not new on television, it has already been done in sports ads and included black/asian/white/latin people, metamorphosing into each other. It's always the same unity message of "we're all in this together, any kind of human being", and this was the same idea in the dove ad.
I find the whole drama around it very obnoxious and OTT (and I'm not surprised the screenshots were taken out of context). People need to calm down (and overall find better things to do online), not everything that includes white and black people is deliberately racist - some are, but not every little thing.

I'm sure that it wasn't Doves intention to come across racist, that wouldn't be smart for their company but from what I read of the article it used to be a "thing" to say black people were dirty and white people were clean so they should have been a bit more careful imo:

But the transition from the black woman to the white women — compiled into a static collage by a social media user — evoked a long-running racist trope in soap advertising: a “dirty” black person cleansed into whiteness. (Among other examples was an ad by the N. K. Fairbank Company, which was in business from 1875 to 1921, that featured a white child asking a black child, “Why doesn’t your mamma wash you with Fairy soap?”)

Having read the articles and heard the intentions of the company as well as the views of the black model featured in the advert think it is the usual overreaction by a few to any suggestion of colour. In my opinion it is those people that seem to see ‘colour’ as a dirty word and see negativity where it was not intended and look for any excuse to throw the ‘racist’ allegation around.

The black model felt good about the ad and felt she was doing something positive for black women until a certain way of thinking tainted it and put a nasty slant on what seems to me a well intentioned ad. Why would any company risk the ‘racist’ label that could damage their reputation and commercial success? It wouldn’t make much sense. I think it is a combination of over-sensitivity by some and/or agenda driven drivel by those PC zealots amongst us.

No they aren’t. That is just what some would have us believe.

Viral marketing. Any publicity is good publicity, etc.

Do you reckon? Even racism? Trump might be stocking up eh? Can Dove get all that Orange off though :think:

I would have given them the benefit of the doubt and assume that someone just "didn't think"... however... #1 the fact that the shirt also changed from brown to white makes it pretty conclusive that they were well aware that this was a "skin colour thing" when making the ad and, also, I don't believe for one second that NO ONE at their HQ didn't say "Accidentally or otherwise this has racist undertones and won't go down well". Someone pointed it out, somewhere along the line, before it went public. No real question about that. They chose to run it anyway and that says a lot in itself.

Not about them "being racist" - but just as I said above. They knew it would be controversial, they knew the press and social media would run with it. It's free advertising.

To be totally blunt; the people who are suggestible enough to be influenced by advertising (and therefore, the target of the ad) are the same people that will say "lol PC gone mad it's not racist nothing about race in it at all ooh looks good actually I'm away to buy some Dove".

As for Trump... I don't think Dove is going to cut through that :laugh:. he needs this beauty;

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....wL._SX466_.jpg

Not in the current PC obsessed market it isn’t.

I think you'll find we're 6+ months into an era of post-PC backlash where it will play perfectly :idc:.

Also :hehe:

But, in all seriousness, Vanish pre-wash bar is ****ing brilliant.

Yeah I guess that makes sense

PS I agree vanish is amazing

Not a bad thing as PC is a dirty word and has become like a cancer spreading out of control. We need a cure such as a good dose of feet on the ground commonsense. I won’t hold my breath on here though - it’s simply not fashionable enough!

You're the only one around here using it.

Making a connection between the Dove ad and the old soap ad is a populist move from internet-nation. With the latter being an explicitly racist ad, and the first one just a pure interpretation of a few people online.
Does racism exist? yes. Shouting "RACISM!" about every little thing and looking at things and thinking how can they be offensive - well that's exploiting the equality message as far as I'm concerned.

If the Dove black-to-white(-to-other-woman-but-let's-not-ruin-the-racism-illusion) woman is racist, then I don't want to begin with the black-man-to-white-woman/woman-to-man/latin-to-asian in this ad:

I'm not saying I think it's racist, I was just saying you would think a big company like Dove would have thought it through better, having said that though I think maybe TS is right and it could have been a calculated move :think:

The point though isn't even whether or not it is genuinely racist, or whether the reaction is over the top, or whether the backlash is warranted. Any layperson - whether you think the ad is OK or not - could have predicted the backlash against this ad... therefore, someone at Dove (probably EVERYONE at Dove?) could also have predicted this backlash. But now they're acting all ":omgno: BIG SUPPRISE didn't see this coming" now that it's out? :think:. Ok.

Even if they were saying "We expected this but stand by our ad which does not have any racist intent" that would be one thing. But they're acting like they had no idea people would make a thing of it! It's nonsense. Of course they knew. Therefore, what is their intent?

So from what I understand the actual full ad is not racist.The black woman turns into a white woman who then turns into an Asian woman.Nothing wrong there.I think the problem is either a shorter edited version or screenshot collage that someone has done which just shows a black woman turning into a white woman on a soap ad which yes in itself could definitely be seen as racist.If Dove didn’t make this screenshot then they have nothing to apologise for.Anyone can edit stuff these days.
However if it was Dove who put a shorter version out for social media without the Asian lady in then it was very careless as it lacks context and would appear racist for sure.It may just be terrible editing.

Oh, no, I wasn't saying that you see it as racism, I was talking in general about the internet reaction, in relation to your post. Sorry if it came across like that.

No worries :love:

I don't find it racist at all tbh, and I doubt it will have been a calculated move either, I don't know why they'd see it as a good way of creating a talking point, Dove are a huge brand and something like a racism controversy would only damage them, they know they'd be more at risk of losing sales than increasing them so that doesn't make sense to me. It was a 3 second Facebook ad not a large marketing campaign so it's likely that any racist connotations were overlooked as less people will have been involved in the approval of it, as well as the fact that people only seemed to make the racist connection after the ad was screenshotted and taken out of context and put into a seperate post so it's not as though those connotations were glaringly obvious anyway - It's something that had to be pulled apart in order to find something racist in it rather than the complaints coming naturally from the ad itself, as far as I can tell.

Reactions like this could actually make companies like Dove more wary about using people of different races in their campaigns in the future out of fear of unforseen backlash so the people who are complaining should think about that and the impact they themselves might be having on diversity by choosing to pick apart and criticise something just because there is a black person in it, when it clearly wasn't intended as racist.

So you genuinely believe that at a multi-million pound company, with a huge marketing division full of highly paid professionals, who create adverts and keep their finger on the pulse of the public on a daily basis... not one person viewed the image of a black person removing their skin to reveal a white person - REGARDLESS OF INTENTION - and said "lol guys the internet is going to lose its **** over this".

I mean, come on.

If you had posted a sample of this on this forum, full of laypeople and ZERO advertising professionals, before it released and said "Will teh internets have a problem with this?", the answers would have ranged from "Yes, definitely" to "They shouldn't because it's PC gone mad but also yes because it's the internet".

Even the people who don't think it IS a problem still know that it WILL be a problem and that there will be a backlash.

But the at least 6 figure salary heads of avertising who have been in the ads game for decades at Dove, a Unilever company, one of the biggest parent companies in the world "got it wrong and didn't realise".

Jumping the shark majorly there let's face it.

...yeah I fairly much agree with winter an Jamie in that I don't find it racist...even watching the ad after it's obviously now been seen as racist, I still don't get it when I watch...I certainly don't think that it was an intentional thing from Dove, they have said not and detailed their concept to the models ...and there is no reason to feel they weren't being truthful/that feels way too 'conspiracy' ..I think it has just sadly been misinterpreted../unfortunately, sign of the times as Arista would say...

Do i think it's unlikely that highly paid marketing people for a company as big as Dove that relies on its image and doesn't need to pull stunts to make sales would realise they've made a potentially racially offensive ad and respond with "lol guys the internet is going to lose its **** over this" - well yes, very unlikely. It doesn't make sense as like I said it wouldn't be worth it for them to risk their reputation over a racism controversy. Why would they seek that kind of attention when they don't need to?
And we don't know how many people were involved with the decision, it's a 3 second Facebook gif, not a large marketing campaign, and since a lot of people have seen nothing racist when viewing it, and the nature of how it even became a controversy - lifting screenshots out of context into a seperate post, it's believeable those marketing people wouldn't have either.
As y.winter said the concept of people fading into each other is hardly new, should they ensure only white people are cast in these types of ads, or that they must go in a specific order? It's all wildly over thinking such a simple ad and I disagree that most people would view it and see racism, and so given the lack of sense it would make for the marketing people at Dove to go ahead with it if it had been spotted, I think the most realistic explanation is that the potential for controversy was overlooked.

ETA: omg Ammi! :amazed: :love:

TBH if I'd just seen that ad without the controversity I'd just have thought they were saying the products works with all kinds of skin types and is good for everyone. I don't associate skin colour with dirt and it wouldn't have occurred to me to think the black woman becoming a white woman implied she was dirty. Now it's been pointed out I can see how it's caused problems but I'm not sure I agree it's racist, it seems to be the perception of it that is the problem rather than the intent.

You should've seen my smile when I saw your name flashing on my phone :love:

Having seen the full ad I personally don't see the problem. However in the past many dodgy things got swept under the rug by the company, so this is karma.

I do like their soap and deodorant though

It's not racist at all. :unsure:

Why is the soap white though? :suspect:

:joker:

Right but the question I'm asking isn't "is it actually racist", it's "should people paid to make Internet ads have realised that people on the Internet would cry racism".

The answer to the first question is subjective and debatable... The answer to the second question, I maintain, is either that they knew when they were making it that it would have backlash, or they are straight up incompetent. I would have thought that anyone making an Internet ad would know what people online are like? And if you know that, even the basics of that, then you know that "Brown skin off revealing white skin" in any context will be branded by some as problematic and racist. If someone does NOT know the basics like that, then why are they being hired by huge corporations to make ads for them? :think:

So yeah I'm still sticking with what I said before. I doubt the add is intentionally racist, and it is a stretch to see the racism in it, and yes, people with an agenda have twisted it to BE racist... But I still don't buy that the people who chose to release it didn't see those issues coming? It straight up doesn't make sense that they wouldn't, if they have any experience, or common sense, at all.

She didn't take her brown skin off though. They all take their shirt off to reveal the next "model" all of them of varying skin tones.

This ^

The edited screenshot could be seen as racist
The full version isn't racist at all.

The problem is, the advert is to do with soap. If it had been an ice cream or clothing advert nobody would have battered an eyelid.