Dove is the latest marketer to find itself in hot water after it ran what many see as a racist ad on Facebook last week.
The beauty brand posted a 3-second video on its US Facebook page on Friday, showing a black woman removing her top to reveal a smiling white woman underneath. On Saturday, the brand said that it had removed the clip in a tweet, and also apologized.
While the Unilever brand is hardly the first to find itself embroiled in a public relations crisis this year, Dove is likely to take a bigger hit to its brand than others, including Pepsi (which was hammered earlier this year for a Kendall Jenner-starring ad), say experts. That is because the Dove ad isn’t just tone-deaf. More problematic is that the ad’s message.
That is because the Dove ad isn’t just tone-deaf. More problematic is that the ad’s message seem to stands staunchly against everything that the company’s much-praised, pro-female marketing has stood for over the past decade. Dove has responded saying that the short video was intended to convey that Dove Body Wash is for every woman and be a celebration of diversity, “but we got it wrong.”
The brand also said the video “did not represent the diversity of real beauty, which is something Dove is passionate about and is core to our beliefs” and that it was “re-evaluating our internal processes for creating and approving content to prevent us making this type of mistake in future.”