Gospel choir bids adieu to cellulite in Nivea ad
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Yikes… Check out this Goodbye Cellulite Choir ad for Nivea. Hat tip to HighJive!
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*sigh*
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who are they marketing this to?
gospel + ass = ??? (oh, it’s black women, they like gospel, they got asses) ???
is that what was really going on at the agency where this ad was conceived?
The beauty industry’s discovery of black women’s bodies makes me uncomfortable. There are enough cultural forces putting black women at odds with reigning beauty standards without marketing budgets devoted to selling beauty products at the cost of our self esteem.
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A few comments:
Hat tip to makethelogobigger.blogspot.com for spotting it.
This ad allegedly ran in Europe (produced by a London agency). It would not last very long on American airwaves before drawing complaints. I think it was a viral video versus a broadcast commercial, but not sure.
When visiting the Nivea site, there appeared to be no other choir references.
In the US, there definitely has been an increase in beauty messages targeting Black women. Most advertisers push their cocoa butter products, as Black women must have a heightened need for that. Queen Latifah and Beyonce have made cosmetics popular. Pantene launched a line of hair products allegedly formulated for Black hair.
It’s really about the mass marketers seeing a profit source and invading the areas where companies like SoftSheen and Fashion Fair once dominated.
Whether the individual advertisers are savvy enough to recognize the differences between Eurocentric and Afrocentric beauty standards remains to be seen.
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there are so many problems with this ad, i don’t know where to begin. ..but i am going to try…
it just seemed a bit sacrilege to have women in church using the word and singing about “ass.” i doubt they would show whites in church praying about erectile dysfunction or something other issue related to sex/sexuality, and certainly with regard to a word that is technically considered profrane, so why are black forms of worship up for grabs when it comes to obscenity? is it because many people take black forms of worship less seriously because they find it “entertaining” in the first place…more so than the more “serious” (note the quotation marks) forms of worship in traditional (read: white) church services? i recall bringing my white friends (who were baptists and catholics) to my church as a child, and they found our service to be “so much fun” and “not like church at all,” which makes me say the above. i wonder if the ad agencies for nivea feel the same… -
All I can say is WTF!
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Did someone slip me a tab of acid I don’t know about? That was surreal.
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“Most advertisers push their cocoa butter products, as Black women must have a heightened need for that.”
A heightened need? It is a long running cultural preference, and one that others found “odd”, or “smelly,” or “greasy,” -until the cultural appropriators discovered Shea butter and other emollients of this ilk. Until the natural/green preference among those who could afford it began to embrace the “primitive”/”lowly” practices of nursing their young and carrying them in colored clothes swathed diagonally across the body.
Even when no one advertised to Black women in any format outside of the print ad, and when that was done nearly solely by Palmer’s and Pond’s, cocoa butter was preferred. We put it on our sons, too.
“Queen Latifah and Beyonce have made cosmetics popular.”
Okay, I get that you were typing quickly, and for expedience sake, but come on with this wording. Are we only talking about global multinationals? (If so, excuse the ‘tude.) While I don’t use make-up, I can think of a few names that seemed to have large advertising budgets…certainly Fashion Fair, think there was a line called Imani, and one called Shades of Color (?).
And heaven knows we’ve always bought even the crap not formulated for us. Which leads me to…
“Pantene launched a line of hair products allegedly formulated for Black hair.”
Ha! I love that wording, love the eyeroll and the high-pitched scathing tones of doubt. Good one.
As to this little “viral video” (your terminology?) jobby above…it was just plain awful, and I could only watch about 40 seconds of it. What’s with the singing that’s being dubbed, or so it seems to me? And the bug-eyed thing Sister is doing?
Can we say m i n s t r e l?
Can I get a witness?
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I’m speechless…………………and slightly disgusted…………no…………very disgusted at the video, I doubt women would actually sing about cellulite in a gospel church……….honestly………
Please do not be offended, as to I did not mean to offend.
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kim,
yeah, i was typing too fast, sorry.
the cocoa butter reference was based on having worked on skincare accounts, and having the clients always direct the cocoa butter products at black women. in fact, there’s a new ad campaign for a line of scented anti-perspirants from secret. the print ad featuring a black woman? it’s for the kuku coco butter scent. they’ve apparently created an anti-perspirant designed just for you.
and yeah, i was really typing too fast with the beyonce/queen latifah reference. i was actually being sarcastic. meant to communicate that black women were rarely shown in commercials for cosmetics like covergirl until beyonce and queen latifah. it’s as if brands like covergirl acted like you never existed.
pantene and covergirl, incidentally, are owned by the same company—procter & gamble. procter & gamble produces secret anti-perspirants too. they’ll probably create a cocoa butter version of pantene and a cocoa butter cosmetics line for covergirl.
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Hey, what is this? Now you’re supplying lateral expansion marketing ideas? (Shhh/Don’t tell nobody/Don’t tell a soul…)
“… it’s for the kuku coco butter scent. ”
While I suppose ‘kuku’ is a word from some culture of brown-skinned folks, or at least amply “exotic,” I don’t know what it means. All my mind keeps looping is the call from that darned chocolate cereal bird, (kinda looks an emaciated Foghorn Leghorn) “I’m Coocoo for Cocoa Puffs, Coocoo for Cocoa Puffs.”Sorry, man, I got major many kids. I live there.
(You know you’re one of my favorites, so please know I’m smiling. I would love to know how you and Ananse find these things out. For years I have urgently sought information on on-air, as well as voice-, talent in commercials, and always hit a brick wall when it came to finding out anything beyond the ad agency.)
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Wow. The stereotype train just keeps rolling on and on and on.
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kim,
I “find things out” mostly because I’m in the advertising business. I get information from ad-related blogs, websites, trade publications and contacts. The ad business has always been somewhat anonymous, at least in terms of letting the public know who specifically is responsible for work. Even someone in the business would have trouble determining voiceover talent, who directed a commercial, and even which advertising agency created a specific ad. There isn’t a universal list or source for advertisements, although there are a few services that allow you to get copies of ads (but even these services don’t have access to everything). However, these services tend to be expensive, and I’m not sure you could use them unless you worked for an advertising agency.
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I think I’m offended. Goodness Wendi, I couldn’t agree more!
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Fast Company: Latina Marketing Maven Ignores Stereotypes, Turns Profit at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture on 05 Mar 2008 at 7:00 am
[…] A coworker and I occassionally amused ourselves by opening some of the reports and laughing about what the researchers said our demographic wanted. Apparently, according to an older report targeting the African-American market, I am supposed to be single, very religious, overweight, and respond well to food images and church choirs. I guess that’s what the deal was with this Nivea ad. […]