Models who feature in controversial ads

Wilson Munene, a sports and fashion model, was the main cast in the banned Fresh Fri advert.

What you need to know:

  • McDonald’s, received a public outcry after releasing an advert that featured a kid reminiscing about his dead father.
  • Pwani Oil ad was deemed too sexual calling for its discontinuation.
  • PepsiCo received a flooring of backlash over an advert that alluded that you could easily solve police brutality by offering police officers a can of Pepsi.

When an advert goes up and for some reason consumers don’t like it, the backlash is oftentimes directed at the company that owns the product being advertised. But behind every advert are models who feature but whose take on the controversial ads is hardly ever sought.

A few months ago, multinational company Unilever caused an uproar online when an advert that some people termed to be steering racism appeared on their website and on other social media platforms.

The advert depicted a female of African American descent who transformed into a Caucasian woman after using Dove deodorant, a brand of the company. Angry social media users created hashtags, called out to the company; the company bowed to pressure, the advert was taken down and an apology given.

Before the world had forgotten about that mark missing advert, H&M, a Swedish multinational, released a photo on their website that Canadian R&B superstar The Weeknd described as embarrassing and shocking.

On the advert, two young kids; black and white posed unbeknown of the raging storm that awaited. The black kid donned a hoodie emblazoned “coolest monkey in the world” while the white kid posed with a “Survival expert” hoodie.

Why the company chose to have the black kid in that hoodie is a question that some online users were posing and wanted the advert pulled down for being culturally insensitive. H&M gave in to the pressure, backpedalled and halted further roll-out of the hoodie.

In April last year, PepsiCo, an American multinational food, snack and beverage corporation received a flooring of backlash over an advert that alluded that you could easily solve police brutality by offering police officers a can of Pepsi. In less than 24 hours, the ad had been pulled down from their site.

During the same year, the fast food giant, McDonald’s, received a public outcry after releasing an advert that featured a kid reminiscing about his dead father. The kid asked his mother what the father was like and according to her, they didn’t have many things in common but both had a taste for Filet-O-Fish, a McDonald’s product. The advert was widely criticised over what most considered as being hugely insensitive to those who had lost loved ones.

Back at home, in 2013, an ad sponsored by Kenya’s Ministry of Health, UKAID and USAID had to be discontinued from airing and taken off the screen after a public outrage that opined the ad to be promoting extramarital affairs.

GLAMOURISE SEX

Pwani Oil Products Ltd followed with an advert that sought to promote the use of Fresh Fri in the kitchen. However, some section of Kenyans felt that the ad had been sexualised and called for its discontinuation. According to the Kenya Film and Classification Board (KFCB), the clip was out to promote and glamourise sex. After a few days of outcry, it was pulled down.

There are one too many examples to point out yet in all these adverts, models posed for the camera as they were being directed on what to say or do. That begs the question, what do the models feel about the adverts? Do they know beforehand what they are getting themselves into? What drives them to cast in such? Do they care about the societal reaction to the adverts? Or is it that the society reads more into the adverts than there is?

According to Wilson Munene, a sports and fashion model who was the main cast in the banned Fresh Fri advert, what matters to him is his serenity. “As a model, I am open to any job and as such, my decision to cast in an advert isn’t determined by what the society will read into it. I think most people are pretenders. They are quick to criticise in public yet are worse in private.”

He adds: “Models know what the advert is all about before it’s shot. In this case, the objective was to be different from other adverts that capitalise on happy families forgetting that young married couples want adventure in their marriages too. From the onset, I knew that the advert would create controversy and I was prepared to defend it.”

He makes clear that his main drive in casting for advert is being associated with a product that he believes in. In a series of since-deleted Facebook posts, Terry Mango, the mother of the Kenyan boy in the controversial H&M advert, broke her silence on Facebook and admitted that she had no problem with the advert. She blasted the outrage and suggested that critics should stop crying wolf and get over it.

“Stop crying wolf all the time, unnecessary issue here… get over it,” she posted. “If I bought that jumper and put it on him and posted it on my pages, would that make me a racist? I get people’s opinions but they are not mine,” she continued in another post. In another message, Terry confessed that she accompanies her son to all the model shoots including that of the hoodie that sparked controversy. “Everyone is entitled to their opinion about this. I really don’t understand but not because I’m choosing not to but because it’s not my way of thinking, sorry.”

Another model, Lola Ogunyemi, who was one of the main casts on the controversial Dove advert defended it and said that she loved it and so was everyone around her. “If I had the slightest inclination that I would be portrayed as inferior, or as the “before” in a before and after shot, I would have been the first to say an emphatic “no”. I would have unhappily walked right offset and out of the door. That is something that goes against what I stand for.”

She continued to say that while she didn’t believe that the ad was intentionally racist, it is important that advertisers consider the impact their images may have. “There is a lack of trust here, and I feel the public was justified in their initial outrage. Having said that, I can also see that a lot has been left out. The narrative has been written without giving consumers context on which to base an informed opinion,” read some part of her message.