Between Nivea and Pepsi, it is clear that whoever these multinational brands are paying to conceptualise their adverts should be fired.
You would think that in a time when racial – and discriminatory – tensions are on a more public level than ever, a brand such as Nivea would think twice about releasing this:
Eish. But let’s just get their story, from Huffington Post:
Nivea’s “white is purity” ad was created to promote their Invisible For Black & White deodorant. The ad appeared on the brand’s Middle East Facebook page for two days and received such an intense amount of backlash on social media that the company decided to remove it Tuesday.
“We are deeply sorry to anyone who may take offense to this specific post. After realising that the post is misleading, it was immediately withdrawn,” Nivea said in a statement. “Diversity and equal opportunity are crucial values of Nivea.”
Fair enough – especially since many of us have a weird obsession with crisp, white T-shirts.
But no. Sorry. You dropped the ball. Sure, the woman might not be white, but come on.
A few tweets had some on-point backlash:
I mean, did this ad not teach them anything?
Words.
[source:huffingtonpost]
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