The Role Of Racism In Advertising

To be racist means to believe that a particular group of people is superior to another group of people. The struggles that America has with racism, particularly racism against African-Americans, go back many years, when people from Africa were brought into the United States of America as slaves in the 17th century. Many years ago racism was used in ads to sell products or services and people found this normal. For example, African-Americans were portrayed as dirty or as inferior. Nowadays, brands have to be very careful when making ads, since the publication of a racist ad could damage or even destroy their public image. This is due to a change in social context: racism is not accepted as much anymore as it used to be. Still, racism in ads

Racism is no longer accepted in ads, which can be seen by the huge amount of backlash that the brand Dove received on their ad for body wash in 2011. The ad contains a picture of three women with different skin colours. On first glance, it seems that the brand is simply supporting diversity, but the text above the women changes that. One the side of the woman with the darkest skin colour, the text says ‘’before’’ and on the other side it says ‘’after’’. This implies that having darker skin is bad, since the product is meant to improve the skin. It can be argued that this was not what the ad was trying to imply and that it is simply a coincidence that the black woman is standing at the left side of the picture. However, many people were offended by the ad and it damaged the reputation of the brand. As a result of this, many people did not want to buy products made by Dove, since they did not want to be associated with a brand that sells its products using racist ads. Dove did apologize for the ad and made clear that they were not trying to be racist. Another ad that was considered racist is an ad by the company Intel in 2007. The ad shows a white man standing in the middle of multiple identical looking black men bowing down. A part of the text reads ‘’Maximize the power of your employees’’ indicating that the black men work for the white one. This can

Racism is no longer accepted in America and brands are afraid to be linked to racism, which is proven by the fact that brands either apologize or withdraw their ads if they have been accused of containing racist images or texts. This used to be different, since people were used to racism in the early twentieth century and even used it to sell their products. It was not until the 1960s that laws were entertained in America that had to stop discrimination and after that it was less widely accepted, as seen in the more modern ads. Of course racist ads still exist, but the audience is now much more critical and will point out racism in ads, which can damage the name of a brand or company. It has and always will be about earning money in this industry, so brands will do whatever it takes to make sure that the audience is pleased with their ads, whether this was including racism in the ads or the opposite.

The conclusion is that the view on racism has changed in the society of America, which can be seen in the ads that are produced. Still, racism is sometimes present in ads but brands are now much more careful and try not to include racist images or texts in their ads, because if they do, they will get a lot of backlash and will possibly have to withdraw their