There’s been much discussion of late about the dynamic between multicultural marketing agencies vs general market agencies–as the latter begins to expand its offerings, the former is prompted to justify its deeper insight and its superior positioning as an ethnic specific agency.

And even within General Market Agecies there’s discussion about the “profile” of the multicultural marketing Director (see “Three Multicultural Marketing Directors Walk into a Bar” on Adage, found via @MiguelACorona.

On the one hand, Ethnic agencies originally formed in response to growing multicultural markets, but also by amazingly talented people who grew frustrated at not being heard or finding room for advancement because of discrimination. 

I’m a believer (along with Jose Villa, who recently wrote about the threat to and  future of multicultural marketing agecies on Adage), that as the population continues to diversify that advertising will have to shift to speak to people of different backgrounds.  People don’t live in silos, and people of different backgrounds interact in and consume the same messages in the same space, all the time.

But let’s go back to the stereotype (note the two young women coming in at the end–isn’t that the stereotype shunned here?  Timid, giggling, shy Asian girls?) and whether ultimately a multicultural agency will always produce bias free, well-targeted ads.  Judging from the ad above, created in China for the Chinese market, presumably the answer is no. 

It could be conscious – PepsiMax is geared to men, so the target for this ad, the young, hip, Chinese male is well-served.  But having a creative team that matches the target audience doesn’t mean you’ll avoid unconscious bias or stereotypes.  They’ll just be those of the person creating the ad.  From that perspective, having a truly multicultural agency (whether it be a general market agency expanding its offerings or strategic alliances among tartet/ethnic agencies) might actually be better, to create messages that resonate with the largest group.

What targeted ads, created by ethnic agencies, have you seen–how did they fare in avoiding stereotpyes?

(Thanks to adfreak as the source of the ad)

I was taking a trip recently to a city where I’d heard an old friend (Maureen Popkin Chiquet) from middle school had settled, so I looked her up.  Turns out she’s the Global CEO for Chanel and was Glamour magazine’s Fashion Woman of the year in 2008.

Oohh…so women DO actually work and hold down careers!  I’d like to hear Chiquet talk about shoes…maybe get some insight into global strategies to sell more of them?

There’s a catch phrase in the environmental movement that says “Think Globally.   Act Locally.”  Global advertisers might be well served by doing  the reverse.

Of course companies selling internationally need to localize their messages to appeal to regional and national markets.  But they must also think globally. 

You have to assume that any ad, no matter how/where it’s targeted, can and will be seen by anyone, anywhere.

So, while Yum Brands (owner of KFC) pulled the ad in Australia, they seem to attribute the problem not to the content of the ad itself, but that  

“a KFC commercial being shown on Australian television has apparently caused offence, particularly in the United States, after a copy of the commercial was reproduced online without KFC’s permission.”

Indeed comments following the first ad, above, have said “you dont understand cricket or Austrialian Culture.”  Okay, so maybe you could give that one the benefit of the doubt, albeit a poor choice.

But, clearly not when coupled with this ad below, from Korea, featuring black, West Indian “savages” soothed by their civilized Korean captive, when he magically produces fried chicken for all.

Just a note about the ad content–while the lesson is that advertisers should anticipate response from anywhere to any ad, regardless of target market, that doesn’t excuse racist content to begin with. 

What do you think?

I definitely smoked Virginia Slims when I smoked 30 years ago.

But who wouldn’t want to be that tall, thin, confident, brave, free-spirited, adventurous woman who didn’t take sh— from anybody.  Sign me up!

Without even inviting me to a focus group tobacco companies have taken note, creating advertising targeted at women in third world countries.  According to Douglas Bettcher, a World Health Organization expert, the tobacco industry is selling cigarettes “using stereotypes such as associating smoking with women’s liberation, the kind of stereotypes featured in smoking promotions decades ago in the rich nations.”

WHO presented a report late last week on tobacco use and women in anticipation of world anti-tobacco day on May 31.

As cigarette advertising laws in the US have become more stringent (you won’t find Joe Camel around anymore), tobacco companies have turned to new horizons.  Of course in the US it’s because we know that smoking kills.  According to the American Cancer Society, “each year about 443,600 people die from illnesses related to tobacco use.”

Whose job do you think it is to design “pink packs of cigarettes…aggressively promoted to attract girls” or  cigarette packs “resembling a perfume containers,” to get little girls in foreign lands to take up smoking?  

In the spirit of intercultural appreciation and respect, I am going to go buy my 9 year old a pack of cigarettes.  Well, that’s one way to look at it, right? 

Photo credits: flickr MsBlueSky, ANT204 University of Toronto

WIXX (101.1FM) rightly decided to stop airing a peculiar 1950s ballad about a love-struck Native American couple after listeners complained about the banter surrounding the song, “Running Bear.” Listeners told Menominee tribal member Richie Plass, a Native American activist, that whooping and inappropriate comments regarding Native Americans accompanied the song, which aired regularly on Fridays on “Murphy in the Morning” until last week.

Another recent event that screamed cultural ignorance was the students who dressed as the KKK to create a film for a history class in Lumpkin County, and caused concern and fear when they walked through the cafeteria at their school.  One response of the school district (in addition to putting the teacher on leave while the incident is investigated) was to “review all class films for approval before proceeding.”

I would love to create a “tool kit” sort of dialogue box that would be required any time an incident like this happens.  As the Greenbay editorial says, ignorance should no longer be an excuse for perpetuating stereotypes.  That said, the dialogue following an event like this usually gets stopped at”what were they thinking,” or in a contrast between “you’re racist” and “you’re too sensitive.” (If you’re not sure what I mean, read through the comments following reporting of any incident of this kind.)

And in the end, the solution is usually “we will never do this again.”  That sounds good–public institutions, media, etc. should not be perpetuating racism. 

But the unfortunate side is that in the absence of good, deep facilitated dialogue to understand the origins of the stereotype, the different cultural perspectives and how we can learn from this incident, we end up silenced. 

And it was silence and complicity that allowed racism to grow in the first place.

What conversations are you not having?

Remember the 1958 film The Blob, with its big red amorphous goo rolling and taking over the town, absorbing the minds of young people who were not strong enough to resist?  Of course the “BIG RED BLOB” was none too subtle a reference to the Red Scare and fear of Communism taking over the US. 

Russia’s our friend now, so in Furry Vengeance, it’s the big bad Asian and Indian business people who heartlessly come in and tear up our natural resources and values in the name of the almighty dollar.  When I pointed this out to Dillon (okay, I should have waited more than 3 minutes after the movie ended to point out my theory) he said exasperated, “can I just enjoy the movie first?”

But the stereotypes were just too over the top. 

With the Asian-American businessman, Neil Lyman of Lyman Industries (played by actor Ken Jeong), he’s obviously USAmerican, and his role has nothing to do with being of Asian descent, and yet he inexplicably goes into some sort of Chinese, Japanese, Karate, English Gibberish rant when enraged, as in “aii yaaai yowie you stew-peed.  He then ads some fake karate tae Kwan do preparation moves in defense.

The Indian investors are fairly quiet, but when Brendan Frasier as the dad makes his impassioned plea “if you sign you’ll kill all the baby animals” Lyman counters with “but you’ll make oodles of money,” to which he completely unaffected says “give me the pen, where do I sign?”

Finally, in a purely gratuitous swipe at the elderly, the only character in the entire movie over 40 is constantly forgetting what she is saying and trying to get everyone, including even the raccoon, to paint pine cones.  Clearly there are no OLD PEOPLE in Utopia.

So maybe I’m overreacting, I thought.  What did others think?  In the blogosphere—right there with me on the awful stereotyping.  On the more mainstream media—only one star, but mostly for simply not being that funny.  And then I read the Chicago Tribune movie critic’s review:

“A bit player exaggerates his Mexican accent, and the Korean American doctor-turned-comic Jeong bursts into shrill, sing-songy Korean chatter on his cell-phone. Kids are never too young to find foreign languages funny.” 

Thank you, Mr. Movie critic, for pointing out kids are never too young to mock other cultures and laugh at racist stereotypes.

Well, at least they may take away a positive (albeit 2 dimensional pound-you-over-the-head-with-it) message about protecting the environment. 

Oh, and my 9 year old son liked the movie–there are potty scenes and skunk scenes and getting sprayed with water to look like you just did youknow what…all around general humor that will appeal to a child.

Oh, and we’re still talking about it and how cultures are represented or stereotyped in film almost a week later. 

So, in the end, perhaps the laugh is on those who created the stereotyped characters in the first place. 

What movies have you seen lately?  How do you balance letting your child enjoy it, while also opening discussion for learning?

Is this the first ever laundry related commercial that doesn’t feature women doing the laundry?  Granted it’s not full fledged clothes washing, but hats off to Saatchi & Saatchi for thinking outside the gender stereotype box in this catchy and effective ad for Tide to Go.  They’re talking fashion, it’s guys night out…and it’s laundry!  Plus there’s good product placement and an easy demonstration as to how the product works. 

I feel like the first time I saw a female saleperson in a car ad! (Volkswagen’s 2010 Sign then Drive event ads).

What ads have you seen lately that turn stereotypes on their head?

At first I didn’t know what I thought of this ad from Eastpak featuring little people, actually Eastpak backpacks that turn into super little people, a la the rock star above. 

 More accurately, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to think about these ads.  The little person Rock Star is a better guitar player; the skateboarder is really good.  The fact that he’s streaking maybe should have raised an eyebrow, but still I thought, “What would a little person think about them?”  Adfreak’s commentary (where I found the ads) also implied that “the average height is 3-foot-9,” seemingly referring to the creatives at Satisfaction ad agency in Belgium, who created the ad.

Maybe I was being too sensitive.  After all, if I automatically said the ads are offensive simply because they feature little people that seems to be more about my hang-ups than anything inherent in the ad. Did I think that any representation is bad and therefore there shouldn’t be any little people in film or ads?

As an interculturalist, my gut was to ‘go to the source’ to better understand inherent bias in the ad.  Two hours of research later…what were they thinking?!

Actually, I was fascinated by clips from the TLC show Little People Big World, and also had good insight from the Little People of America website.  There was a link to an article entitled “Who You Calling a Midget,” which equates the “M” word with the “N” word in terms of its negative and derogatory power.

But it was the link to the I Am the Bag Eastpak site (from brand-e.biz ) that was the clincher, where the ads can all be seen in succession.  The “I am the Peacemaker ad (each of the ads claims to portray the soul of the bag–“Your soul!”) is clearly meant to portray the little person as the brunt of the joke.

And, seriously, there’s a game at the end featuring a little person dressed as an ‘ancient Zen Master’ speaking in an awful Asian Accent (“F—k Shoo”) and different characters come out and hit him (he’s protected inside the backpack) with a bat, nun chucks, yelling, kicking and more. 

That is wrong on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin.

I searched and found at least a dozen blogs running the link to the Adfreak piece which even uses “midget” and “wee folk” in its descriptors, but none are critical of the spots.  Did it need research to uncover its offense?  Or are these breakout roles?  What do you think?