Heineken Beer Ad - Pulled after online backlash

[Pacolovestacos]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk...r-better-ad-following-online-backlash-n860166

 

[L&Lfan]

Apparently light skinned people drinking light beer is now racist.

 

[LSUmiss]

Apparently light skinned people drinking light beer is now racist.

It could be if the slogan is “lighter is better”. I’m not sure if they thought it was clever or they just didn’t pay attention to who was cast in the commercial.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

I stopped drinking Heineken, they did something that pissed me off, wont drink it again. You know unless nothing else is around, I'm not that upset.

 

[Hikergirl]

I took it as the bartender sees a hot woman who happens to be light skinned like him.
If it was a black bartender and it was a hot black woman and the beer slid past light skinned people to her would it be racist and would there be backlash? Probably not.

 

[Iya]

Wow, talk about tone deaf. I can't believe that ad made it through team evaluations.

 

[Jdbsfw]

Still better than UPS’s “What can Brown do for you?”.....

 

[MamaBelle4]

Seemed pretty racist to me.

Take a minute and really pay attention to the commercials on TV. Most are made up primarily of white people.

This beer sailed past several people of color. Many. Chances are there aren't that many POC in an average commercial break.

Then it says, "Lighter is better". Whether it was intended to be racist or not, it is pretty easy to see why it would be taken to be so.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Seemed pretty racist to me.

Take a minute and really pay attention to the commercials on TV. Most are made up primarily of white people.

This beer sailed past several people of color. Many. Chances are there aren't that many POC in an average commercial break.

Then it says, "Lighter is better". Whether it was intended to be racist or not, it is pretty easy to see why it would be taken to be so.

Crown Royal commercials that feature a lot black casts.

Hennessy is made reference to enough in hip hop or rap music and outside of that blacks are considered the brand's major consumers.

The combination of gin and juice is quite synonymous with blacks given it's usage in rap music and consumed by famous people.

And there's more out there.

This Heineken commercial is probably one where it was not well thought out how it could have been interpreted just by who was cast. If the commercial featured the cast being of one ethnicity (regardless of what that ethnicity is) it likely would have been interpreted as simply speaking towards the type of beer which is a pale lager. Interestingly enough at least according to a 2014-2015 data point the main demographic for Heineken was those of asian ethnicity (of course that could have changed).

 

[MamaBelle4]

Crown Royal commercials that feature a lot black casts.

Hennessy is made reference to enough in hip hop or rap music and outside of that blacks are considered the brand's major consumers.

The combination of gin and juice is quite synonymous with blacks given it's usage in rap music and consu

I'm not saying that there are no people of color in commercials. I just counted during this past commercial break, of the 42 different people shown, 6 were not white.

. If the commercial featured the cast being of one ethnicity (regardless of what that ethnicity is) it likely would have been interpreted as simply speaking towards the type of beer which is a pale lager. Interestingly

I completely agree with this.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I'm not saying that there are no people of color in commercials. I just counted during this past commercial break, of the 42 different people shown, 6 were not white.

In order for you to actually get a feel you need to do much more than a small sample.

I get what you're saying but don't ignore that other brands out there feature predominately black casts.

What commercials you see also depends on time of day, type of thing you are watching, premium channels versus not, the actual channel you are watching, etc

Not surprisingly watching BET and TVOne gives me a completely different commercial experience than watching another channel

 

[MillauFr]

Why on earth would anyone think that lighter is better when it comes to beer? Most light beers taste like water. Darker and more full bodied is obviously better tasting.

 

[MamaBelle4]

In order for you to actually get a feel you need to do much more than a small sample.

I get what you're saying but don't ignore that other brands out there feature predominately black casts.

What commercials you see also depends on time of day, type of thing you are watching, premium channels versus not, the actual channel you are watching, etc

Not surprisingly watching BET and TVOne gives me a completely different commercial experience than watching another channel

That's true. I just did a small sample as an example (from CNN).

This is from an article in November when a man complained about there being too many African American actors and it not being a genuinely accurate representation of our society. He believed that 50% of the ads had African American actors. Two researchers however found the following:

"He and co-author Robert M. Entman found that in their sample of 1,620 ads on ABC, NBC, and Fox, African Americans appeared in 32 percent of them. Additionally, 3.3 percent of the ads featured only black actors, 28.7 percent featured both black and white actors, 58.8 percent featured only whites, and 9.1 percent had actors of an “East Asian facial cast.”

And of course some brands cast more minorities and some cast less. How people of color has Heineken featured in the past (genuine question)?

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

That's true. I just did a small sample as an example (from CNN).

This is from an article in November when a man complained about there being too many African American actors and it not being a genuinely accurate representation of our society. He believed that 50% of the ads had African American actors. Two researchers however found the following:

"He and co-author Robert M. Entman found that in their sample of 1,620 ads on ABC, NBC, and Fox, African Americans appeared in 32 percent of them. Additionally, 3.3 percent of the ads featured only black actors, 28.7 percent featured both black and white actors, 58.8 percent featured only whites, and 9.1 percent had actors of an “East Asian facial cast.”

And of course some brands cast more minorities and some cast less. How people of color has Heineken featured in the past (genuine question)?

I wonder how many ads directly targeted towards blacks are on BET and TVOne?

As to your quote- what I looked up is the book was published in 2000 which is quite a long time ago. It's not clear in that article to me at least if the sample being spoken about is from 2000 which could be 18 years ago depending on when it was done or even longer or if it's more recent. I think we can all agree that time changes (hello Cheerios ads to name one ) So I guess the main question is when was that sample actually done. It also says they hadn't done any follow up research.

Basically main point is we're missing some key information and being able to duplicate the results in order to actually weigh in much on what a google search advises at least from the information you posted.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

Only someone completely tone deaf wouldn't see a beer passing by darker skinned women and ending up in the hands of a lighter skinned one with the slogan "lighter is better" as a problem. Whoever let that one through needs a quick lesson in marketing.

 

[CarolAnn856]

That's pretty much blatantly racist. If you can't see that, well, then.

 

[kaytieeldr]

I'm not saying that there are no people of color in commercials. I just counted during this past commercial break, of the 42 different people shown, 6 were not white.

Just counted during a Golden Girls break on TVLand. Six out of 20 actors were not white.

 

[kaytieeldr]

and 9.1 percent had actors of an “East Asian facial cast.”

Immediately brought to mind:

 

[tarheelmjfan]

Seemed pretty racist to me.

Take a minute and really pay attention to the commercials on TV. Most are made up primarily of white people.

This beer sailed past several people of color. Many. Chances are there aren't that many POC in an average commercial break.

Then it says, "Lighter is better". Whether it was intended to be racist or not, it is pretty easy to see why it would be taken to be so.

How many commercials have you seen recently? I couldn't care less what color of skin the actors have, but we must be watching very different commercials. It seems to me most companies are making an effort to include all races or leave white people out completely. Now I know there's a reason for that. I still don't care.

 

[Hikergirl]

That's pretty much blatantly racist. If you can't see that, well, then.

Well I'm white so I don't see racism in everything. If this commercial was reversed with a slogan darker is better, I wouldn't think anything of it.
Would a black person think that was blatantly racist?