Brief Three: Advertising Ethics

Ethics within advertising is about maintaining honesty and integrity while producing accurate information to consumers.  Producing a transparent relationship between consumers and producers is essential to preserve moral principles within advertising. 

While analyzing ads on television or social media may not be the "cool" or "fun" thing to do, it's important to pay attention to the commercials and advertisements popping up in our daily lives. 

While it makes sense for companies to promote and advertise their products, sometimes the techniques and strategies are not monitored in an ethical sense. Whether these unethical advertisements are intentional or not, they can lead to confusion and mislead mass target audiences.

Unfortunately, over time there have been numerous examples of unethical advertisements. Plagiarism, misleading images (BigMac), hidden fees, exaggerations, and sensitive topics (sex, politics, religion) are several examples of unethical advertising tactics, to persuade consumers.

In 2014, the Advertising Standards Council of India regulated new guidelines which banned all ads with discrimination of color, or the portrayal of those with darker skin as inferior.

In previous years, advertisements in India had continually portrayed people with darker skin in a negative light and promoted a culture of light skin. 

One of the colorist ads that stood out to me was a campaign for the skin-lightening product called Fair & Lovely. This product and the advertisements promoting it demonstrated negative stereotypes for darker-skinned women.

Fair & Lovely, now known as Glow & Lovely, was a major distributor in the "fairness" cream industry in India.  Within the distribution and promotion of this cream, the company portrayed darker-skinned people (women specifically) having difficulties finding jobs and love, because of the color of their skin. In blatant terms, the campaigns were selling the idea that lighter skin was superior to darker skin. 

In India, lighter skin is embraced as a beauty standard, encouraging girls and women across the country to purchase the cream.  Since Fair & Lovely debuted in 1970, it has been India's largest selling skin lightening cream. According to BBC.com, "Top Bollywood actors and actresses have appeared in advertisements to endorse Fair and Lovely that promote fair skin as a means to finding love or a glamorous job."

The multimillion-dollar industry faced major backlash in India, for the disrespect and discrimination against people of darker skin. Because of the promotion of colorism, Fair & Lovely lost major business within India and international countries. 

To make things right, after years of backlash, the company changed its name and has made attempts to abide by India's newest guidelines for advertising ethics. 

The company is working on making an inclusive brand, welcoming and supportive of all colors, leading "a celebration of a more diverse portrayal of beauty." The company released a statement in 2020, apologizing for the suggestive and colorist advertisements, "We recognize that the use of the words 'fair', 'white' and 'light' suggest a singular ideal of beauty that we don't think is right, and we want to address this" and have promised to feature different skin tones, to create representation for women in India and across the world.