They kinda do keep things separate, though not necessarily equal – one blogger who covers advertising in general talks about a Prego ad where the black couple says "Nah, it don’t need nothin’ " [added to the sauce to make it taste good]. That blog links to this one, which has a lot of interesting commentary on imagery (and is where I read about the Dell catalog, I couldn’t find it when posting earlier).
Advertising is such an interesting reflection of our beliefs about ourselves and others. It’s even more of a mirror than art, these days (art is my background, and is the reason I’m convinced advertisers do - or at least should - know exactly what they’re doing; graphic designers and fine art majors take some of the same classes).
There are plenty of non-offensive images being used, like the Gatorade commercials featuring men and women of various ethnicities. All of them are on an equal footing, shown as fit and strong.
OTOH, had any of you seen this Dolce & Gabbana ad? Holy cow.
You know, if I was a young black man who worked in a cubical at a big company . . . Yeah, I’m offended right away. But, I am a middle aged white guy, who never even sat in a cubical, so, I needed to have it explained to me. It’s mostly stupid.
(Yeah, I spent some time wondering about those guys running into each other, too. This ad is even more offensive if you are the poor exec who paid money for it! It’s stupid, even without out the offensive elements.)
Or just forego having humans in your ads at all. Just stick with cute little stuffed animals & cartoons which only come in purple, green and maybe orange. Don’t let them have gender. Don’t let them speak either, for surely their voice will offend someone.
This might be a result of an excessive workload. I don’t know the Intel PR culture, but I know the Intel engineering culture, which sets the tone. It is rush, rush, rush, meeting, meeting, meeting. The Noyce building has six floors with over 20 conference rooms per floor, and they were full all the time. Whoever owned this image from the ad agency might have had to sign off on it after a one hour meeting, and not had time to reflect. Error rates go up with stress.
At another company I worked for, there was a massive scandal over an illustration in an internal magazine. It was something about the global reach of the company, and they illustrated each continent with a cute cartoon - including a monkey for Africa. The agency, and the PR person who edited the magazine lost their jobs over this.
Different people have their sensitivity meters tuned to different levels based on their background and experience. That’s actually one of the good arguments for diversity.
Except that you can’t see the block, or their feet. And I thought people at the start of a race were usually looking UP. Plus their yellow jerseys are very close to their skin tone - it looked to me like an inexplicable yellow light shining on them.
Now, if they were running past the “camera”, photographed in motion, it would’ve looked very different.
I went back and counted - of the 49 people who indicated their response, 23 saw race/power issues first, 22 saw them as runners first, and 4 people saw both about equally.
It actually would be more reasonable to have a sprinter looking straight ahead, primed to charge off the block as soon as the gun goes off. No runner takes off with his head down like that, and this is perhaps the biggest reason why the ad is stupid. Even if you recognize him as a sprinter, he doesn’t look like a sprinter that is ready to do anything other than look down his own shirt.
I think it’s pretty ambiguous. You can’t see that they are in “set” position, since you can’t see the blocks. And while it could be construed as bowing, one wouldn’t normally extend one’s arms at full length and touch the floor that way when bowing. I honestly did have to read the Snopes page to realize what the issue was.
They should have gone with the track coach and team analogy instead.
I don’t know why they do that. Mr.stretch tells me that running is a very psycological sport…runners are always trying to psyche the other runners out. Maybe they look down so they won’t be distracted by the other runners or the crowd.
The folks who designed the idea may have over-estimated how familiar people are with sprinting. I would never guess “runners” by taking a quick glance at the ad, and I suspect that lots of non-athletes would also find the position bizarre-looking.
The skin-tight lycra athletic uniform means absolutely nothing to you?
I don’t see any way a person could look at that and not immediately think “olympic sprinter about to take off.” Those guys are not dressed in white button-downs and Dockers. How do people dress where you work?
What makes these men “black”? Their skin color is identical to mine in summertime, and my ancestry is Walloon/Irish/German. Their faces are too obscured for us to see them, and they have no hair.
So what is “black” about them? (Or “him” — it’s obviously the same person digitally cloned.)
If the person, like me, doesn’t watch the Olympics or any other track and field events. Yes, I figured out what the ad’s meaning was, but I had to do a double-take. I don’t think it’s intentionally racist, but I think it’s a poorly-designed ad. The fact that it’s confusing to so many in the thread proves that.
I’m not doubting you, but that would make you without question the darkest Irish person I’ve ever seen. The guys’ skin looks quite dark to me.
The bandwagon fallacy isn’t quite cutting if for me. Tell me again, you see guys dressed like that, positioned like that, and you don’t think “sporting event?” Just another oppressive day at the office with my muscle-laden scantily lycra-clad co-workers?
I just looked through several dozen photos of “sprinters” at the Corbis website, and the sprinters in the photos are just as likely to be looking downward while at the starting blocks as they are to be looking forward.
I asked my 64-yr-old mom, who happened to stop by (thought she might have a different perspective) — she wondered why they were dead.
Seriously, no. I had no idea they were wearing lycra, I thought it was bizarre lighting casting yellow highlights.
