Heineken, you could do better than this !!!

Heineken is one of my favorite brand, though I am not their target customers and also do not drink beer at all. Each year, especially the time near holidays, I am excited to watch their advertisement on TV. I really love the combination between the creative content they create and the music they use in each TV commercial. It is really attractive and also impressive. However, Heineken still made mistake in their “seems-to-be-perfect” TV commercial. The typical example is one of their latest advertisings that I watched when I was in Vietnam.

We could find that drinkers in the ads come from different countries and are portrayed with different typical characteristics. The campaign shows that the company has seen the increase in multicultural buying power and what Heineken did here is trying to take advantage of multicultural opportunities which remain underleveraged and underfinanced in targeted and total market platform. That could be seen when they target customers from diffirent cultures including marginalized group such as Asian in their ads. In their casting, we also could see their attempts to bring the image of people from some specific countries into their commercial to make their TVC becomes familiar with some such group of customers. Moreover, they also show that they realize the importance of insight in making TVC to align better with the values, culture and the tradition of population they trying to reach. This could be seen in the way they emphasize the legend of all their drinkers in the ads. Another success of Heineken is that they have eliminated their limitation in sending their media messages to customers from different groups by not using any specific languages in the ads. However, people could easily realize that the images of characters here is a typical example of stereotypes.

In this post, I want to take a deeper look at the part of the TVC with the image of a kung fu assassin. I think that in this part, the target population of Heineken is the Asian in general, not the Chinese only. However, what they portrayed in the TVC is the legend of Chinese which is not really familiar with people from many Asian countries. As an Asian audience, I could bear no resemblance to this part. I find that Heineken failed to address the cultural awareness in this part because they did not corporate the values of their target customers (the Asian culture in this case) in their ads. The root cause might come from their unawareness of the Asian cultural value. Additionally, I have met a lot of people who think that Asian people are mainly as the same as Chinese which comes from the stereotype of people about Asian people. That might be the reason why Heineken only use the legend of Chinese in this ads, which eliminates a large number of their target population as Asian people. By doing this, the effectiveness of their TVC in reaching Asian customers reduces significantly.

Heineken seems to have no choice in correcting their mistakes in this ads right now. But what is more important is that they should never make this kind of mistake again if they do not want to lose their position as one of the most popular beer producer in the world. How could they maintain that position when they keep eliminating a large part of their customers? It is necessary to know and understand about your customers, but it is much more essential to understand deeply about them when you aim to specialize your advertisement to a specific group of consumers and maximizing the effectiveness of the ads. If Heineken want to address the message of "Open your world" as what they use in their slogan, the understanding of the real different worlds of customers is the first thing the company should keep in mind. Moreover, it is impossible for the them to target many groups of customers in one TVC. They might think about producing seperate TVC for specific group of people so that they could avoid both stereotypes of a big group and the wrong portrayal of their customers group. By doing that, the connections between the company and the underrepresented group will be strengthened which might create more brand loyalty. 
Nowadays, we have much more opportunities to approach different kind of customers and make profits from that. We are living in a multicultural society and I think that you don’t want to lose your own chance just because of the basic mistake: being unaware of the culture of your target customers.

Post-Coby Show Era and the case of "Suits" series

The time when black people are portrayed as not qualified to have equality in the society might have partly gone, as we are trying to achieve the “post- racial” society. The progression could be seen on TV shows and movies. There is a time when enlightenment racism (Jhally) promotes the myth that the black could not achieve the equality is because they have not worked hard enough and they have just themselves to blame for that. One of the remarkable point in the film history with a “new” black representatives is the TV's biggest hit in the 1980s - The Cosby Show- an American television sitcom about an upper middle class African- American family. The Post-Cosby era witnessed a lot of changes in how the black are represented on TV and today I will take “Suits” Tv Series by Universal Cable Production  as an example.

Jessica Pearson is a character in “Suit” series. She is portrayed as a black lawyer who appears cold- hearted and strong. Working as a Managing Partner in Pearson Hardman- a law firm in New York city, Jessica Pearson is the most powerful and smartest woman on the show. She helped to built the firm and try to protect it as her own family. She is the women who is not just driven by money and power, she acts to be respected by people. Jessica Pearson is a typical example of representation of the black in Post-Cosby era when there are more African American characters on network television than before. Those characters are represented as people from upper middle class. They might be lawyers, doctors, etc, but they are rarely from the working class. The images of large African American families on TV are now replaced by the image of individual characters. Most of the African America characters on TV show now do not involve in intra-racial romantic relationship and pairings or exist in positive relationship with family. (For example, How to get away with murder or Scandal series or Grey's anatomy.) In the case of Jessica Pearson, she has divorced with her husband Quentin Sainz and kept fulfilling her ambition alone. She has the familiar relationships with Harvey Specter, Louis Litt and Mike Ross who are the three white lawyers of the firm. We could see that the workplace of Jessica is disconnected from other African America.The problem is that in the Suits show, the connection between race and class is obscured when in reality that’s not the case. Another problem is that the show reinforces the idea that the black could do things well when they have worked hard and do it in the separation with their community. By doing this, the film series do not portrayed the real experience of African America which might fit into the stereotype of black women.With 4 seasons from 2011 till now, Suits has received approximately 8.2/10 rating scores. This means that the series are confirming the stereotype of black women with unreal images to a large number of audience over time. More series with the same stereotype of black people might make the audience lose their interest in the film because it is supposed to make a progression in portraying the true image of African America in particular and the society in general in comparison with the previous era.
We might turn back to the familiar issue of the media about stereotype. Is it fair to the African American people to be portrayed apart from their own community to be successful? Is it really progressive to reinforce the myth that the black could make their dreams come true by just working hard and class and race do not have any impact at all? It’s high time Universal Cable Productions (UCB) to make the real progress to speed up the development of company. The media is supposed to bring the truth to audience, you know, and that’s what film producers should focus to put it on their products. So the question is what could UCB do? One suggestion is that the black female characters should be “on aired” with a variety of representations, ranging from married to single characters, and their family and communication should also be portrayed more frequently. Another suggestion is that the divorced characters such as Jessica or other single ones need to be married or find their new sources of happiness along with their current jobs in upcoming episodes. Their characteristics could be displayed their more clearly and the character could become more attractively. A variety of characters with different types of personalities portrayed will make your movies more interesting. I think that that’s enough to show the characteristic of black women who are just good at their jobs. Black women do well than that, you know, and alienating representations of various types of them should be avoided.

The Hufflington Post and social responsibility

As a Vietnamese girl, I was really surprised when I was asked about top 5 most popular topics covered on the news. The answer from American friends and mine is likely to be the same: Politics, War, Education, Tax and Poverty. However, when I look at American mainstream newspapers such as New York Times or USA today, things is much different. On the column of Hufflpost’s big news pages, we could find Politics, Media, Entertainment, Business, etc, but poverty even is not in this list of The Huffington Post.

Poverty, which is known as a severe social problem, is not reflected in the media as accurately as we think. The percentage of poor people in reality is much larger than what is portrayed on The Hufflington Post. What did you think of when reading a post mentioned “the poor”? Is it the image of a group of thin people living in houses in bad condition? Or are they the black? There is a fact that when you enter the Poverty part of The Hufflington Post, you could find nearly a half of posts using the image of the black, especially black kids. By selecting some images of the reality of the black poor family and making them more noticeable to the audience, the reporters make us pay more attention to that image rather than others. This explains why when we talk about the poor, people have tendency to think about black family with many children. Poverty is also portrayed as a threat or suffering of the whole society on the media. Here are titles of some typical posts on The Hufflington Post: “Low Poverty Rates Mask Deeper Despair In Many States”, “More Cities Are BasicallyMaking It Illegal To Be Homeless”, “45 Million Americans Still Stuck Below Poverty Line”, etc. Such words as “despair”, “illegal”, “stuck” partly frames what the audience think about the poor. By framing, I mean when the media focuses attention of audience on some events provided with certain meanings.

The Hufflington Post is known as a liberal website, whose audiences are expected to care much about the social situations. When one of the issues of society is framed in such particular way (that might be found in other pages but not expected to be shown on The Hufflington Post), this becomes a problem. On many pages, stories of the poor are often represented without the social context. There are many reasons causes poverty, such as the lack of basic resources, or the consequences of earthquakes, floods, or when poverty is handed over from generations to generations. But these outside factors is barely mentioned on many online newspapers. The poor, in general, is also portrayed as experiencing their own culture instead of having no other options. The Hufflington Post- as one of the mainstream media channels- did a good job in reflecting the social issue with its underlying cause. However, that’s just the case with the context of their posts. By framing through images of black people and the title of the posts, The Hufflington Post implicitly reinforce the stereotype of the poor on their page. By doing that, audience who wants to access the accurate information about poverty and who are willing to take actions to solve the problem could be misled to feel sympathy for the poor instead of taking actions as soon as possible to manage the problem.

As one of the mainstream newspapers, The Hufflington Post should make a change to give the audience the good frame of the reality. It might be really difficult for small and unpopular pages to do that because they did a bad frame for their post, but to The Hufflington Post, the task is much easier. They just need to change their frame in some ways, such as using more suitable images for their posts, or considering the match between posts and images more carefully. Treatment recommendation for the problem or calling for actions is also needed in their posts so that their goal of doing social outreach could be attained. The media plays an important role in shaping public opinion and the media channel hold a part of responsibility to improve the social condition. By representing the real problem with the adequate image and providing the good treatment recommendation, The Hufflington Post could not only keep it position as one of the mainstream media channels but also fulfill their social responsibility.

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.