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Tarah's Digital Voice
Strategy. Creative. Content.
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Moronic/Racist Advertising of the Year Award: Nivea Pulls "Re-civilized" Ad Following Social Media Backlash
Wow. Just wow.
The official Nivea statement reads: “After realizing that this ad is misleading, it was immediately withdrawn.” Really? It’s pretty disturbing that no one on the brand team realized that before launching it, much less when it was pitched to them by the moronic agency.
What is it going to take for brands and agencies to understand that there's a vast difference between irreverent humor and idiotic, offensive, archaic thinking? Categorize this with Groupon's Super Bowl spots.
A Nivea print ad encouraging African-American men to “re-civilize” themselves, now appearing in September’s issue of Esquire magazine, created a firestorm of tweets, Facebook updates and blog posts accusing the brand of racism.Nivea took to its Facebook Page Thursday afternoon to issue an apology and thank fans for their concern. Parent company Beiersdorf AG withdrew the ad from future publication.
“Thank you for caring enough to give us your feedback about the recent ‘Re-civilized’ NIVEA FOR MEN ad. This ad was inappropriate and offensive,” Nivea said on Facebook. “It was never our intention to offend anyone, and for this we are deeply sorry. This ad will never be used again. Diversity and equal opportunity are crucial values of our company.”
The ad in question portrays an African-American man tossing out a mask of himself with a beard and afro-style hairdo. It reads, “Look like you give a damn,” and has the phrase “re-civilize yourself” bolded in all capital letters.
Bloggers, Twitter users and Facebook members took issue with the racial implications of the print ad.
“The message couldn’t be clearer: Natural hair on a black man isn’t a style preference or a nod to afrocentrism — it’s straight-up uncivilized,” GOOD Associate Editor Nona Willis Aronowitz wrote.
“Wonder what, if anything, @Rihanna will say about this as the face of #nivea,” fashion writer Septembre Anderson tweeted. Rihanna was chosen as the official spokeswoman for Nivea earlier this year. The caption on Anderson’s Twitpic photo reads, “Adding Nivea to the list of companies that will not be getting my money. Post-racial my ass.”
A separate ad featuring “a clean-shaven white guy getting ready to toss away his scraggly unshaven head and the words, ‘Sin City isn’t an excuse to look like hell,’” seemed to be overlooked in the midst of the social media uprising, according to AdAge.
Nivea parent company Beiersdorf AG shared the following longer statement with CNN:
“We are deeply sorry to anyone who may take offense to this specific local advertisement. After realizing that this ad is misleading, it was immediately withdrawn.
“Diversity and equal opportunity are crucial values of NIVEA: The brand represents diversity, tolerance, and equal opportunity. We value difference. Direct or indirect discrimination must be ruled out in all decisions by, and in all areas of our activities. This applies regardless of gender, age, race, skin color, religion, ideology, sexual orientation, or disability. Nor should cultural, ethnic, or national origin, and political or philosophical conviction be of any significance.”
via mashable.comUm, 2,097,152 calendar invitations? No wonder I get no work done! [PHOTO]
Way to give me a heart attack, Apple.
My Thoughts on Kenneth Cole's Bonehead Egypt Tweets
Today's bonehead brand move: On Twitter, Kenneth Cole (@kennethcole) tried to leverage chatter around the trending hashtag #Cairo with a joke and a sales pitch (see original here):
I have to hope that the 99 retweets are criticizing it, but I'm sure there are plenty of jerks laughing along with him. Note that on the @KennethCole Twitter profile, it reads: "Thoughts that end in -KC are from me personally"; that means that Mr. Cole sent this beauty out himself (or someone is getting fired).
Cole's personal repsonse to the uproar is disingenuous & ridiculous. It would've been better to say nothing. If you really weren't intending to make light, then you wouldn't have tried to tap into a trending topic with a link to your spring collection (see original here):
Never fear, though, a Twitter account has already been created for @KennethColePR with spoof tweets (remeber @BPGlobalPR?) and Matt Binder (@MattBinder) has already kicked off some KC public humiliation with a new hashtag: KCairo
What do you think? Are people blowing this out of proportion, or do you agree that this is exactly how brands should NOT be using social media? Let me know in the comments.
I'm pretty sure True Blood has jumped the shark & might never recover. Sad. [SPOILER ALERT]
It began last year, when the show started to descend into a completely over-the-top, cliched Pagan worship subplot that took over and led us to a completely cheesy, melodramatic finale. However, I have seen Alan Ball dip in the middle of his series before (there were some rough spots during Six Feet Under, but it came back around and it's definitely on my "show my kids someday" list), so I came into this season with high hopes.
I hoped that the team took the time during the hiatus to return to the strong characters and fine balance between contemporary society and the supernatural that made the show great in the first place. Sure, it's always been a bit of a prime time soap opera, but I was willing to endure that for the talented ensemble cast and the intellectual merit of using vampires and other supernatural beings as a metaphor for minorities and other sub-communities of society.
Unfortunately, this season seems to be taking it yet further into the cliches of werewolf, vampire and other works in the monster and horror genre. It has been more violent, arguably to excess, and the plot-lines are becoming more and more contrived and shallow. It's bad enough that Sookie seemingly has sexual tension with every man/creature she meets (she's not THAT hot, really), but the heartbroken, puppy-dog eyed, hunky werewolf was beyond nauseating. In addition, the show now has such a multitude of parallel plot-lines that it seems completely unfocused; more like they're hedging their bets that the audience will get on board with most of them, rather than that they're creating a complex web of subplots that will ultimately unify in a carefully constructed climax.
The real kicker, and the inspiration for this post, though, was the final scene of the episode, where we see the most overused of all sexual tension cliches - vicious hatred leading to fierce, violent sex. Again, I probably would have forgiven Bill and Lorena's hate sex (essentially a rape fantasy played out on screen), especially because of the reversed gender roles here - even though Bill is seemingly physically dominating, we know that Lorena is controlling his mind, so she's actually raping him. However, the way that this actually played out on screen was, well, ridiculous. What should have been an intense, emotional moment between two favorite rivals in the series, became a caricature; a hackneyed reduction of this world into a stunt for shock value. Specifically, as Bill pounds Lorena, he twists her head around 180 degrees, she says she still loves him and he screams. What is this, Twilight? A National Lampoon movie? I'm not sure whether I should have laughed or vomited.
If Ball wanted to generate buzz with this scene, he accomplished that, as the blogosphere is atwitter, but most of what I've seen has been negative. As someone who has been a big fan of his, as well as vampire flicks and the first season and a half of this series, I hope they bring it around and pleasantly surprise me. But, if I wanted to see this type of unoriginal, asinine entertainment, I'd watch Scary Movie.
Reviews, thoughts, images, articles and other content about digital media, real-time content, apps, advertising & technology that resonate with me.
