Failed Attempts at Diversity in Marketing

 Sydney Walters

sw844317@ohio.edu

Over the past few years, there have been successful attempts to push for diversity across every field in underrepresented communities. But unfortunately, many unsuccessful attempts have also caused dissonance and many issues across the advertising world with those successful attempts. 

An article from Inc. outlines several failed advertising attempts, and the lessons for advertising professionals as the push for diversity and inclusion grows in the next few years.  

Voice of Reason

Source: NPR

At the beginning of the push for diversity in media, Mountain Dew potentially released the most racist and insensitive attempt at inclusion. According to NPR, a 2013 ad featuring a goat voiced by Tyler, the Creator was released and featured the goat assaulting a waitress because the restaurant was out of Mountain Dew, then running from the cops. In the final part of the ad, the goat was seen in a police lineup with several black men. 

This ad was critically received and immediately removed from every platform. This advertising fail proves that every advertising needs a voice of reason; Pepsi Co needed someone within the agency to step up and challenge this ad before it even made it to the public. 

Learn the Culture (and the language)

Source: AdForum

While this ad campaign did not specifically attempt to be inclusive visually, it attempted to be inclusive in culture. In 2007, Visa attempted to include their Spanish-speaking communities by publishing a specific spot titled "La Vida Toma Visa." In Spanish, the verb "tomar" has two different meanings, either "to drink" or "to take." The overall ad campaign was "Life Takes Visa," so while the Spanish slogan could be translated that way, it could also be translated as "Life Drinks Visa." 

This ad campaign attempted to be linguistically inclusive but neglected different translations of the vocabulary they chose. That left Visa looking culturally inept and did not catch on well with the Spanish-speaking community. The key takeaway from this ad campaign is to understand the target audience when attempting to reach a diverse community with campaigns.