When the expression troubles

Race is one of the most controversial topics over years. I’m glad to see that the racist ads have significantly decreased on the media recently. But it is still a good choice to use carefully any image related to this sensitive issues to promote your products. Today I wanna talk more about this with the example of Dove’s Visible Care Body Wash advertisement.

We are in post-racial society today, that’s what many people say! By “post- racial”, I mean the time when people of color no longer have to face the obstacle of race. The inequality in the society now is thought to exist because of the economic or political reasons, and does not base on ethnicity anymore. To an advertiser, the idea of making our advertisement to match and reflect this new era sounds great.

Let’s take a look at the advertisement of Dove’s Visible Care.

The background is divided into 2 parts: “before” and “after”. The before part on the left describes the skin in bad condition and the “after-Dove” skin on the right is smooth and moisturized. In addition, there are 3 women- one black, one possibly Latina and one blonde- standing in front of the background from left to right respectively. In the view of a customer, this design implies that using this product will make the black women skin “visibly more beautiful” and might turn her into the white women. This advertisement is said to insult customers having dark skin because it implicitly suggest that lighter skin is much better than dark one. The reply of Dove's PR in this case is: "The ad is intended to illustrate the benefits of using Dove Visible Care Body Wash, by making skin visibly more beautiful in just one week. All three women are intended to demonstrate the "after" product benefit. We do not condone any activity or imagery that intentionally insults any audience.”

By taking advantage of the ideology of “color blind”- the deliberately effort to not pay attention to thoughts about race in the post- racial society- using models from various ethnic groups to emphasize the idea: “real beauty comes in many shapes, sizes, colors and ages” in the advertisement seemed to be a smart choice. That buyers appreciate the effort of the company in supporting the social equality could earn more love for the product in particular and the firm in general. When using this idea, Dove has to consider the negative aspect of the color blind ideology that it ignores and overlooks the privilege in the society. (Privilege is defined as particular advantages, permissions, rights or benefits that just an individual, class or caste could afford. This means that when the white has privilege, they have access to many things that people of other skin colors don’t). According to "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh, one of the most popular white privileges on the media is people having it could “easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazine featuring people of their race, while others could not.” Congratulations! Dove did a good job to avoid this privilege! Unfortunately, they fail to put that interesting idea in an appropriate context. There is no direct link between two messages of the advertisement when they try to inform the effectiveness of the product and appreciate the real beauty of women from different races simultaneously. The combination of these two does not make much sense to the customers. Moreover, the truth is that, race is still a controversial topic and using racial image needs much more attention even when we are considered to be in a “post-racial” era. It might be a waste of effort and money to spend on advertisement for the “post-racial” society when our society have not reached that yet.

So the only advice for Dove is: Stop using this advertisement as soon as possible. The explanation to correct the misunderstanding of this advertisement should be clear and widespread on the media. Dove should never make this kind of mistake again if they do not want to lose their world’s top cleansing brand right now and affect the leading position of Unilever on the market. What is written binds the writer, be careful with whatever you pose to the public. It is much better to look at the “real” society rather than the ideal one when making advertisement. Catching the new social trend is good, but please ensure that you convey your message clearly to the customers. If you are not sure about this, please focus on the product itself, any irrelevant extra information shouldn’t be added.