Heineken’s “Lighter is better”- Ad mistake

Heineken Light began running it’s ‘sometimes lighter is better’ campaign in Europe last year in June. But it only took a few days for the campaign to spark complaints when it began running in the U.S. this month, forcing the brewer’s U.S. division to pull the ads this week.

• The ad shows a bartender sliding a Heineken Light down a bar to a woman who appears dissatisfied with her glass of wine. The beer passes several dark-skinned bar goers, including a man playing a guitar, before reaching the woman, who has lighter skin than some of the other patrons.

• In a hyper-sensitive racial environment, there is not much question that this could very easily be viewed as offensive. What sometimes is acceptable in Europe isn’t acceptable in the U.S. and a lot of time the failure comes in not really evaluating the impact that it is going to have in a particular region.

• The ad campaign came under intense scrutiny after Chance the Rapper slammed it as ‘terribly racist’ in a tweet to his more than 7 million followers.

• The incident is only the latest example of brand teams failing to recognize potential racial sensitivities that seems obvious, especially after ads reach wider audiences and are shared on social media.

Marketers must create an open environment where feedback can come from anywhere. And when evaluating campaigns, executives must take into account not just how the ads will be received by their core consumer targets, but by people of all races and backgrounds because you are only one tweet away from danger.

Source- https://bit.ly/2HeZKIU