17609: Converse Defender Tells Everyone To KKKalm Down.

 

Adweek published yet another perspective on the Converse lynching controversy, allowing an author to figuratively hang himself.

The color commentator closed by remarking, “I fully expect this column to incur similar wrath from the sanctimonious corners of the internet where offence is easily taken and blame must then be immediately apportioned.”

Okay. Challenge accepted.

For starters, the author seems oblivious to having assumed a stereotypical role in the matter. That is, he’s the Angry Old White Guy.

It’s a waste of time attempting to school the culturally clueless. Although it’s particularly annoying in this case, as the author boasts having a PhD in Marketing and hypes his MiniMBA programs.

He’s clearly out to educate the masses versus consider the opportunity for a teachable moment. Self-absorption always trumps self-enlightenment, self-improvement, and self-awareness.

The final proclamation underscored his ignorance: “It just requires everyone to calm down.”

Yes, calm down despite once again experiencing the lashing disrespect of an industry historically mired in systemic racism.

Calm down by being told how to respond to offensive material by a bona fide representative of the offenders.

Calm down when even the unintentionally biased avoid accountability as intentionally as card-carrying KKK members.

From Converse to Ed Sheeran, Let’s End These Tedious Apology Tours

Converse, Oxford United, and Ed Sheeran all got dragged through the same ritual for mistakes that were accidental or not even theirs

By Mark Ritson

It was a rotten week for Converse. 

On Sept. 3, the Nike-owned brand posted a new campaign on social media for the Chuck 70 X built around Karina, the very famous singer from K-pop group aespa. 

In the key image she stands in a long white skirt, wearing the shoes and holding a second pair in one hand, framed by a spotlight cut in the shape of the Converse star.

Two weeks passed.

Then, someone noticed that the edge of the star projected onto her skirt made a shape a bit like a Klan hood. And that the shoes hanging from her hand could be read as a body. Then a second image surfaced, from Converse Malaysia, of models on a ladder reaching for sneakers strung from a tree branch. 

The two pictures welded together online into a single verdict.

Converse was now running “the most racist ad of the season.” The work was “shocking,” “abhorrent,” “repugnant.” Even if it was unintentional, the fact that it had gotten past legal, marketing, and leadership was itself an unforgivable offence.

Converse apologized within a day, pulled everything and promised to do better, but not enough for Louisiana Congressman Troy Carter. 

“Lynching is not a creative concept. The Ku Klux Klan is not an aesthetic,” he raged. “This campaign should never have been created, approved or released.” Nike and Converse, he said, should explain publicly how the images had passed through their approval process.

Step back from the heat for a second. Nobody seriously thought, for even a moment, that a Korean photographer shooting a Korean pop star for the Korean market was evoking the Klan. It was an accident. And the instant the claims were made, Converse said sorry, and pulled the work. 

Which prompts a question nobody in the pile-on bothered to ask. 

What else was Converse meant to do here?

It didn’t matter, though, as a wrong had been done, and offence taken. It didn’t matter whether it accidental or not, or whether an apology had already been offered.

Penalties must apply. 

The same script ran in England last week around the same time at Oxford United, a third tier football club. The team was founded in 1893, and a new range of American college-style clothing celebrated the fact with UNITED across the shoulders and a big 93 beneath it.

The collection went live on Sept. 11.

Almost immediately, someone inside the club worked out what a United 93 shirt looks like on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. The range and the posts promoting it were gone within two hours. That should have been the end of it.

It wasn’t. A week later, the club was being roasted on CNN, ESPN, and the Washington Post and had issued a full confession. The shirts “should not have reached the point of sale and we take full responsibility for not undertaking proper due diligence.” Again, nobody suggested any of this was deliberate. And again, the mistake was fixed within hours. But still an apology was required.

Then there is Ed Sheeran

On Saturday night, Sheeran delivered the most extreme entry in this new genre: an apology for something he demonstrably did not do. 

In Philadelphia, before playing a note, he stood in front of 60,000 people and said, “I am making mistakes and I’m so, so sorry.” 

He was apologizing for a rapper’s politics, a stadium owner’s ban, and a promoter’s decision, none of which were his, to an audience that just wanted to hear Shape of You. 

A man who has spent his career steering clear of every political issue going found himself in the middle of the most intractable one on earth. Through no fault of his own he found himself apologizing.

We have reached a very low point. The combination of crisis management, the fragmentation of culture and the insidious effects of social media have turned this decade into an unpleasant, sanctimonious place. Where the only option for innocent people is to eat humble pie with a double serving of reputational rescue slathered on top.

Converse set out to offend no one, and when it did, it made amends the same day. Oxford United made an awful accidental mistake and fixed it immediately, then apologised anyway. Ed Sheeran just wants to play music but must first apologize for things he did not do and does not understand. 

I fully expect this column to incur similar wrath from the sanctimonious corners of the internet where offence is easily taken and blame must then be immediately apportioned. 

Real harm, deliberately done, deserves an apology and consequences, and brands that drag their feet deserve everything they get. A mistake with no intent behind it deserves a correction. That’s all. 

“We’ve withdrawn it” is a complete sentence. It does not need “we understand.” It does not need “we’ll do better.” It just requires everyone to calm down.

17556: On Creating And Influencing DEIBA+ Change In Adland.

 

The previous post about Equinox and its White advertising agency perpetuating racist Asian stereotypes warrants additional commentary.

Advertising Age spotlighted creators who criticized Equinox via Instagram and TikTok, including Eunnuri Lee and Ed Choi.

Lee—who boasts 108K Instagram followers and 237K TikTok followers—skewered Equinox and the responsible advertising team, ultimately vowing to boycott the fitness brand.

Choi—who boasts 322K Instagram followers and 680K TikTok followers—went directly after the Equinox Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Digital Officer, calling her out by name and blasting her professional credentials.

Creators and influencers have infiltrated Adland, delivering content, promoting brands, and wielding considerable power.

Yet can they impact progressive change, succeeding where trade organizations, clients, protesting insiders, legal advocates, and politicians have failed? That is, can they bring DEIBA+ to Adland?

17553: Equinox And Its White Advertising Agency Are Sweating Over Racist Workout.

Advertising Age reported on an Equinox campaign featuring imagery publicly condemned as racist Asian stereotypes.

Based on the corporate response, Equinox apparently agrees with the protestors, as the ads are being fully pulled and official apologies have been formally posted.

The responsible White advertising agency—Angry Gods—also admitted to cultural cluelessness. Plus, Angry Gods pledged charitable donations to the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. Expect scholarships to follow in performative style.

Ironically, the campaign theme reads, “Question Everything But Yourself.”

Equinox and Angry Gods failed to question everything while executing the work. And the co-conspirators will probably not question themselves for being insular, insensitive, ignorant racists.

Equinox pulls AI ad after creators call out racist Asian stereotypes

By Gillian Follet

Equinox, the luxury fitness company, has pulled an AI-generated out-of-home ad and apologized after dozens of Asian content creators accused it of perpetuating racist stereotypes.

The ad, part of a campaign that broke in January, featured an AI-generated image of an Asian woman’s head mounted on a metal rod, with a hand pressing a thumb between her lips; the image was juxtaposed with a real photo of a different woman, including her exposed torso. Over the past two weeks, creators across Instagram and TikTok have condemned the ad as dehumanizing and fetishistic.

“Asian women have already been treated as dolls, submissive sex machines, anime girls, robots, decorative objects [and] mail-order fantasies for decades now,” said artist and content creator Eunnuri Lee in a video posted Friday. “We are constantly positioned as hypersexual beings and also not fully human.”

Lifestyle creator @relishwithreese called the ad “so disturbing” in a video uploaded earlier this month, questioning what message Equinox was attempting to convey. Soogia, a food creator with nearly 3 million total followers who uses only her first name online, called the ad a “literal embodiment” of the sexualization and objectification of Asian women. And Ed Choi, a creator and podcaster, went further, directly calling out Equinox’s chief marketing and digital officer, Bindu Shah, in a video criticizing the ad for “overly sexualiz[ing] Asian women.”

Though conversation around the ad spiked over the past two weeks, it originated as part of the company’s “Question Everything But Yourself” campaign, launched in January. Made with Los Angeles-based design and strategy agency Angry Gods, the ads addressed the proliferation of AI imagery online by pairing absurd AI creations—Pope Francis in a puffer jacket, a high-heel-wearing Justin Trudeau wrapped around a stripper pole—with images of real people. The idea was to position human strength as a counterpoint to digital fakery.

The ads ran across social, digital and out-of-home placements.

Equinox told creators in comments and DMs last week that it was “in the process” of “fully remov[ing]” the ad from OOH placements. The ad has been taken down from 10 Equinox club locations across New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco where it was still on display, an Equinox spokesperson confirmed today.

“This campaign was designed to explore the false realities created by AI and social media, including fake leaders, fake bodies, fake food and fake robots,” another spokesperson for the company said in an email. “While that was the creative goal, we recognize there was an unintended impact, and we apologize for that. We made the decision more than a week ago to fully remove the image—a choice guided by our core values of inclusivity, mutual respect and empathy, which ensure the Equinox community is a place where everyone is welcome.”

The agency, Angry Gods, also apologized for the offending image in an Instagram post shared Friday, then edited the statement the same day after facing criticism for initially referring to the backlash as a “discussion.” 

      

“Whatever we intended, an artificial, eroticized Asian woman’s face is not a neutral symbol of ‘fake,’” the agency stated. “It carries a history, and we should have seen that before the work ever shipped.” The agency will be donating $5,000 to the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, with agency founder and CEO Krish Menon contributing an additional $5,000 to the organization, Angry Gods stated.

Some OOH displays from the campaign, including the ad at the center of the backlash, had remained up for months in cities such as New York before Equinox removed them. While some creators had occasionally discussed the ad since it went up in January, Equinox earlier this month posted a video of its gym on New York’s Bond Street, where the ad was prominently displayed in one of the windows. The video has since been deleted.

Several of the creators who criticized the ad, including Choi, pointed out that the unsettling image of an Asian woman’s disembodied head didn’t match the surreal yet playful tone of the rest of the campaign.

“Hey, Equinox, if you want me to ‘question everything,’ I’m gonna ask: why the f*ck did you … think [this] was a good idea?” Lee said in her video. “Why did you need to use an Asian woman’s body? And I’ll also ask this: who the f*ck was in that marketing room?”

The controversy around the ad echoes the backlash American Eagle faced almost a year ago, when its Sydney Sweeney campaign was criticized as racist and overly sexual. American Eagle stood by the campaign, with Craig Brommers, the retailer’s chief marketing officer, later telling Ad Age that the polarizing campaign actually boosted the brand’s business.

17327: On Bringing Back Black Blasts From The Past.

The previous post on Dos Equis spotlighted a common practice among White advertising agencies, whereby iconic campaign characters are revived and/or resuscitated to reinvigorate a brand.

 

The reintroductions include gushing from CEOs, CMOs, and CCOs, revealing sales were best during promotions of the past, the updated critter will ignite a boring category, the public demanded the reappearance, blah, blah, blah.

 

Has anyone considered bringing back Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus?

 

The same marketing criteria mentioned above can surely be applied to the famed triumvirate.

 

Hell, Honey Bunches of Oats once coaxed Diana Hunter—the Honey Bunches of Oats Lady—out of retirement.

 

Who’s next—Mia the Land O’Lakes Native American Maiden, the Frito Bandito, and Annie the Chicken Queen?

 

Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war!

17158: Swiss Miss For Swatch.

 

Adweek reported Swatch yanked a “slanted eye” ad in China that received more than an eye roll response. Pulling back lashes prompted a backlash—including calls for a boycott. Looks like Swatch got clocked.

 

Swatch Pulls ‘Slanted Eye’ Ad in China Following Backlash

 

The Swiss watchmaker is now facing a boycott in one of its largest markets

 

By Rebecca Stewart

 

Swatch has removed an ad in China that showed an Asian model pulling the corners of his eyes following backlash online.

 

The image was published as part of a campaign that ran on social media platforms in the country, including Weibo, which has over 580 million users.

 

However, many commentators said the pose appeared to mimic the racist “slanted eye” gesture, historically used to mock Asian people.

 

On Saturday (16 August), Swatch apologized in a statement issued on Instagram and Weibo. The brand said it had “taken note of recent concerns regarding the portrayal of a model” and confirmed it had removed the images.

 

“We sincerely apologize for any distress or misunderstanding this may have caused,” the statement concluded.

Swatch, which also makes Omega, Longines, and Tissot watches, generates around 27% of its revenues in the China, Hong Kong, and Macau region. However, sales in the market fell 14.6% year-on-year in July as demand slumped in China.

 

Despite Swatch’s apology, some consumers are still calling for a boycott of its brands.

One Weibo user with more than 1 million followers accused the company of “racism against Chinese,” suggesting regulators should punish the brand.

 

On Instagram, another critic wrote in a comment: “That wasn’t a mistake, it was a deliberate display of supremacy and dominance over others, embedded in your marketing.”

 

In 2023, French luxury brand Dior faced a similar controversy after running an ad showing an Asian model pulling up the corner of her eye.

 

ADWEEK has reached out to Swatch for a further statement. At the time of writing, it had not replied.

17141: Dunkin’ Golden Hour Refresher Refreshes Genetics Controversy.

 

Adweek reported Dunkin’ is getting a golden shower for its Golden Hour Refresher advertisement, which makes a reference to genetics.

 

It might be a case of bad timing, as the public is still processing the American Eagle “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Genes/Jeans” campaign.

 

Or it might be a case of the responsible creative teams at Dunkin’ and American Eagle having cultural cluelessness in their DNA.

 

Dunkin’ Faces Backlash Over Genetics Reference in New Ad 

 

Consumers are hyperaware of the topic amid outcry over American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney campaign

 

By Elena Cavender

 

Dunkin’s latest ad, released on the heels of American Eagle’s new campaign starring Sydney Sweeney, is facing backlash on social media for mentioning genetics.

 

The ad stars The Summer I Turned Pretty star Gavin Casalengo and promotes Dunkin’s Golden Hour Refresher by playing on the actor’s “golden” tanned skin.

 

The spot came out days after American Eagle’s “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” campaign, which has drawn criticism for alleged racist undertones and promoting eugenics due to its celebration of Sweeney’s genes. In the ad, the blonde hair, blue-eyed actress says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color.”

 

While the Dunkin’ ad’s mention of genetics is subtler, it has struck a nerve for praising traits associated with white beauty ideals while mentioning genetics. In the ad, Casalengo says, “This tan? Genetics. I just got my color analysis back and guess what? Golden summer.” Color analysis refers to the beauty trend of picking colors that look best on based on skin tone.

 

The pushback against the Dunkin’ ad might have more to do with the timing of the ad than the content itself. But consumers were quick to comment on Dunkin’s YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok accounts to point out the troubling trend of mentioning genetics in advertising and to leverage accusations of racism. 

 

Dunkin’s TikTok post of the ad received over 1.3 million views at the time of writing. One comment reads, “What’s up with ads and the word genetics rn” received over 25,000 likes. Another comment says, “So no American Eagle or Dunkin’, got it,” garnered nearly 2,000 likes. 

 

Like with the American Eagle campaign, TikTokers are posting standalone videos on the controversy. One creator posted a video arguing it’s especially odd for Dunkin’ to mention genetics given that unlike the American Eagle ad, there is no gene-related pun. It received over 36,000 views at the time of writing. 

 

Dunkin’ did not respond to ADWEEK’s request for comment.

16281: Removing Culturally Clueless Characters From Advertising—But Keeping Them In Advertising Agencies.

 

A recent post on UK Mad Women in Adland noted that one of the spotlighted creative executives hatched the culturally clueless advertisement depicted above.

 

Turns out the Mad Woman shouldn’t be too harshly judged for the concept. After all, the advertiser—Robertson’s—had utilized a golliwog as its brand symbol since at least 1910. The origin story claims the company visited the US to set up a plant in Boston, where a family member bought a golliwog doll. The image first appeared on price lists, eventually being adopted as Robertson’s official mark.

 

In short, Robertson’s Golly is the UK equivalent of US characters like Rastus, Uncle Ben, and Aunt Jemima. The critter retired in 2002, with Robertson’s insisting they were not bowing to political correctness; rather, the decision was made for commercial reasons.

 

So, it shows how brands can come to see a need to remove racism from advertising. Which begs the question as to why such clients won’t do likewise by removing the systemic racism presented via partnerships with White advertising agencies.

 

Golly, it sure is baffling.

 

15612: Justice Delayed Is Just Another Day In Adland.

 

Here’s a throwback of sorts. A Hartford Courant article in 1999 spotlighted brand images—including Aunt Jemima and sports mascots like the Washington Redskins—that were slow to evolve with the progress of society. Hey, it only took over 20 years after publication of the article for the corporations behind such culturally clueless characters to finally do the right thing.

 

When Brand Image Falls From Favor

 

By Matthew Kauffman, Courant Staff Writer

 

Think you’ve got a Y2K problem?

 

Sixty-four years ago, film mogul Darryl F. Zanuck put together a new studio and dubbed it 20th Century Fox. The name, christened with a modern tone, has since mellowed into solid nostalgia.

 

But come New Year’s Eve, it may sound nothing so much as old.

 

Fox says it has no plans to retire the venerable name. Still, at the Patent Office in Washington, D.C., take a guess who’s filed an application for the trademark “21st Century Fox.”

 

Fox’s dilemma points up the problem businesses face when their hard-built identities become dated or fall out of favor. Companies often spend years and millions building the value of their brands. But what is a company to do when its carefully crafted image begins to conjure the wrong image?

 

It’s enough to kill a brand. In the 1930s, pharmacists began selling an appetite suppressant called Ayds, which for a time was the top-selling weight-loss supplement.

 

And then the AIDS epidemic struck.

 

Sales plummeted, and within a few years, Ayds was off the market.

 

“There are just some things you can’t overcome,” said Ken Love, president and creative director of Lippincott & Margulies, a New York identity management firm.

 

So the Exxon Valdez oil tanker is now the SeaRiver Mediterranean.

 

Similarly, Valu-Jet jettisoned the name and repainted all of its planes after a disastrous 1996 crash in the Florida Everglades that killed 110 people. Goodbye, Valu-Jet. Hello, AirTran.

 

But experts in brand management say killing off a brand name—even one that’s tainted or dated—should be an option of last resort. The reason: In a crowded commercial marketplace, a familiar brand name can be a company’s most important selling asset.

 

“Brands help customers make decisions, and they’ve never been more important because the world is so confusing and cluttered,” said Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of Landor Associates, a brand-management company.

 

So companies such as Landor spend a lot of their time helping clients salvage a tainted or outdated image.

 

The chubby Campbell’s Soup Kids were hearty ambassadors for the company, but faced an image problem during the health-crazed 1980s. So Campbell’s kept them on the payroll, but put them on a crash diet.

 

Kentucky Fried Chicken may be the most famous six syllables in fast food, but as the chain grew, the company concluded that the name was too long, focused on too narrow a portion of the menu, and highlighted fried foods, which had fallen squarely out of favor. It might as well have been Kentucky Fat Chicken.

 

So the company capitalized on what Adamson calls the “FedEx Syndrome” and took a cue from consumers who were already abbreviating the restaurant as KFC.

 

“It really is the best of both worlds. The people who know and love us as Kentucky Fried Chicken still know and love us as Kentucky Fried Chicken,” said Michael Tierney, a spokesman for KFC. “But it also allows people to think more freely about our menu, and not just one part of the menu.”

 

KFC faced another challenge with the death of the company’s founder, “Colonel” Harland Sanders. Sanders died in 1980, and although his face remained on packaging, KFC had lost its most valuable spokesman.

 

So last year, the company debuted an animated Colonel, voiced by Randy Quaid. The new ad campaign preserves the familiar salesman—and adds hip-hop dance steps to project a more modern image than the elderly, white-suited Southerner.

 

That could easily project the wrong image, and companies often face their toughest challenges when they realize their icons are culturally offensive.

 

In the sports world, universities and professional teams have struggled for years over the fate of their often stereotypical Native American mascots. In the business world, some companies dumped offensive marketing symbols, such as the Frito Bandito, and others have been put through dramatic metamorphoses. And none was so dramatic as Aunt Jemima.

 

Aunt Jemima was created in 1889 as a classic Mammy figure, a crudely drawn, cartoonishly proportioned black woman with a rag tied around her head. According to the history created by the company, she was the revered cook on the plantation of a fictitious Colonel Higbee. Revered throughout the South for her skills in the kitchen, Aunt Jemima, the story went, had finally been persuaded to part with her top-secret recipes.

 

It may have been an early use of black people in American advertising, but this was a message aimed squarely at white people, and one that began to trouble consumers.

 

So in the 1950s, the company, owned by Quaker Oats, began slowly updating Aunt Jemima’s appearance until a dramatic makeover a decade ago remade her as a sweet, modern young grandmother. The head rag was gone, replaced by pearl earrings and a modern perm.

 

“As American culture has evolved, so has the trademark,” said Margaret Cohen, a spokeswoman for Quaker Oats.

 

The makeover preserved the familiar icon, but Love isn’t sure to what end.

 

“She has become so homogenized that I think she has lost all her character. I don’t know who she is,” he said. “It’s almost like they’re handling it like they’re embarrassed to have this brand.”

 

If not embarrassed, perhaps sensitive. Aunt Jemima is not marketed primarily to African American consumers, but since 1990, the company has sponsored an awards program honoring black female community leaders that is run by the National Council of Negro Women (which, incidentally, is one of a number of black organizations that have found themselves with out-of-date names. The most prominent of them, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has resisted a name change in recognition of the organization’s powerful heritage. But the United Negro College Fund a few years ago began marketing itself as the College Fund/UNCF.)

 

Cohen said the sponsorship is part of the company’s long history of community support, particularly with programs aimed at women, the brand’s primary consumer.

 

Adamson said it is important to update images, but he said the original premise of the Aunt Jemima brand—that it was superior because it was the secret recipe of a black plantation cook—may no longer have any sales value.

 

“Sometimes, the distinction is no longer relevant, and you have to come to grips with that,” he said.