Ad Campaigns and Social Justice Ethics

Every year, several companies in the fashion and beauty industry face backlash for putting out racially insensitive ads. These ads offend particular races, often people of color, and go against the system of social justice ethics. Social justice ethics is under the branch of virtue ethics, further under the category of egalitarianism. Social justice ethics is is about what is fair for everyone and treating everyone as equals with equal rights and freedoms.

This year, H&M received loads of backlash and had two collaborators, The Weeknd and G-Eazy, walk away from partnerships with them due to their insensitive ad for a children’s hoodie. The company advertised a hoodie that reads “coolest monkey in the jungle” on a little dark-skinned black boy. H&M is a Swedish company, and might not be aware of the history of blacks being compared to monkeys, especially in American culture. However, it goes against social justice ethics because it offends a specific people by promoting, whether knowingly or unknowingly, what is considered to be a racial slur against them. It is unethical because it insinuates this little black boy is a monkey, and less than human, which was something that was once said about black people to justify slavery.

The fact that there was nobody to review the ad and consider that it might be offensive is a problem. In the textbook it states, “Understanding other viewpoints is key to effective media communications. Advertising executives may realize that if they were of a different ethnic group or gender, they might find a proposed advertisement offensive.” It is unethical that different points of views weren’t considered.

Dove, the beauty brand, has also come under scrutiny for several of their body wash campaigns attempting to showcase diversity, but completely missing the mark. The ad shows a dark-skinned woman in a brown shirt taking off her shirt to reveal a very pale skinned white woman in a matching skin shade tee shirt. At first, one might not see it as offensive. But, given the history of soap companies using the idea of a “dirty” black person cleansing themselves to whiteness, this is a highly insensitive campagne.

Another one of their ads in the past shows three women standing in front of a before and after picture. They are arranged from dark to light, with the dark-skinned woman in front of the picture of the before picture of darker, dryer skin and the fair skinned woman in front of the after picture of light smooth skin.

To avoid social justice ethics problems like these, brands should focus on diversifying the marketing teams and having different people from all backgrounds represented and making decisions so that all viewpoints and communities are well represented.

Media has helped to set the standard of beauty as being lighter or more fair skinned. Ads often equate lighter with better, or more moral, or more representative of cleanliness.

Another ad campaign for a Chinese detergent company has to be one of the most racist portrayals we’ve seen this decade. It shows a black man with paint splattered on his shirt and face coming towards an asian woman who is washing clothes. She pops a detergent pod into his mouth and shoves him, head first, into the washing machine. He comes out a clean, sparkling, asian man.

Not only was the ad overtly racist and very unethical for offending black people in the worst way, the company’s apology shows that they don’t even see it as unethical. Their so-called apology states, "We express our apology for the harm caused to the African people because of the spread of the ad and the over-amplification by the media,” the company said. “We sincerely hope the public and the media will not over-read it.”

Their apology defies duty-based ethics and ethics of care. Usually, it is a company’s duty to accept responsibility for offending and remove the ad and promise to make changes. The apology was more of an “We’re sorry you saw it” rather than an “We’re sorry we did it.” It was insult on top of injury. It defies care ethics, because the apology shows that they really didn’t care about why it is they were offending. They showed that they were aware of what the ad insinuates and that their intentions were to insinuate that message.