ADVERTISING MISSING THE MARK: FOUR MOST OFFENSIVE ADS
What were these brands trying to achieve with their offensive advertising?
We all remember Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad 2017, which sparked intense backlash for making light of the Black Lives Matter movement. The supermodel offered a police officer a Pepsi can, as if that would be the solution to the epidemic of police brutality.
Take a look at four other ridiculously offensive ads
through the years.
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1. Ford and Berlusconi
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This ad for a Ford Figo depicts scantily clad, bound and gagged women with a grinning caricature of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was caught up in a sex-for-hire scandal. Nothing sells a car like insinuating you can put three crying women in the back, right?
2. Nivea telling blacks to re-civilize
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Nivea's “Re-Civilize yourself” presenting a clean-shaven and smartly dressed black male tossing the head of an afro-donning male didn’t go down well. The 2011 campaign was axed for being blatantly racist.
3. Sisley compares snorting cocaine to a fashion addiction
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Fury erupted in 2007 after fashion label, Sisley, ran an ad featuring women snorting a white dress as if it were cocaine, with the caption "Fashion Junkie". The glamorisation of drug abuse should be an obvious red line.
4. PETA says lose the blubber
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PETA released this ad on a Florida billboard in 2009. Suggesting people who are not vegetarian are whales is probably not the best way to gain supporters.
