Blog #5: Racism in Advertising

Racism is prevalent in advertising even now in an era where you would believe that racism would be mostly gone from media.  Advertisers today sometimes let slide some extremely racist ads that they may feel are okay, but the majority of the population feel otherwise.  One ad that fell into this is the VW car bomber ad, which wanted to showcase how tough their car was by having a "terrorist" blow himself up in the car.



Is it ever right to to racially stereotype for advertising purposes? No, I don't think it is ever right to racially stereotype in advertisements.  An ad can easily convey their message without reducing a culture to a mere stereotype.  Such as the commercial above, the ad uses the stereotype that all muslims are terrorists which is obviously not the case, but VW could have easily shown that their car was tough without the unnecessary racism.

Racism in advertising is in no way a thing of the past.  It has gotten better, the majority of ads today are no longer blantantly racist or not racist at all, but racism is still prevalent in many ads today.



This ad by KFC is not a thing of the past, but was made in 2014.  This ad is using the old stereotype that all black people love fried chicken, and that in a foreign unfamiliar place fried chicken is exactly what she wants to feel at home.  Ads like this shouldn't be made, or at least could have been made better.  A way to make this commercial okay would have been to add at least two other children of different ethnicity and have them all go to KFC, because then it would be read that it's simply an American thing and thus familiar in that respect, not because of their race.


Advertisers have a huge ethical responsibility.  They are making something that will be seen by potentially millions of people.  Of course, no matter how careful you are, there will always be complaints, but because of how many people will be seeing it, advertisers have to be careful that what they put out won't be offensive.  They need to make sure that the content they produce are not fueled by stereotypes to sell their product.  Not only is this necessary for their product to be successful, but it can lead to bad PR that could severely hurt the company's image.