I don’t know if these ads have been showing up in other cities in Canada, but Koodo Mobile’s ad campaigns are really starting to irk me.
First of all, they ran that line of ads with fat-hating taglines like “Lose that chubby contract,” “Fat-free mobility is here” and “Say bye-bye to bill blubber,” along with pictures of people in exercise gear just in case we didn’t get the message.
Their latest ads show people with huge mouths and glinting white teeth shouting the company’s slogans. Which would be one thing, except the people in these ads are disproportionately black.
Is it just me, or do these caricatures bear a striking resemblance to the old cartoons that depicted black people as having enormous mouths and lips and dazzling white teeth? I have seen a few ads with white people in them too, but it looks suspiciously like someone tacked them onto the campaign as an after-thought. What also makes the preponderance of black people in this set of ads suspect is that Koodo’s previous campaign didn’t feature a single person of colour.
The images become particularly troubling when you put them in the context of Koodo’s purposefully ugly aesthetic. They used people in brightly coloured retro workout gear for the first set of ads, and the people featured in this set all have traditionally unsexy qualities: huge glasses, ginger hair, bad haircuts, braces.
So what are we supposed to make of those afro’d black folks in bad sweaters? Is it just equal-opportunity geek-hating, or is Koodo taking their retro shtick too far?
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16 comments
Kate,
Your timing couldn't be better. This morning as I was waiting at a streetcar stop near College and Ossington, I was staring at yet ANOTHER poster in a bus shelter and I knew something wasn't right. I noticed the weird posters crept up a couple weeks ago AND I noticed that the 'characters/ charicatures'were disproportionately black. I tried to think back to the other campaign and couldn't remember ANY black people in those ads. The big mouths, the big teeth...what the hell! I don't think it's retro shtick I think it's racism shtick.
Posted by Dianah
April 8, 2009, 5:09 PM
I have been staring at these ads for weeks now, feeling equally unsettled. Thanks for putting it into words.
Posted by Rachel
April 9, 2009, 9:49 AM
I hated these ads too, and I couldn't figure out why exactly why, but yeah, the mouth shape was really what put me on edge. Thanks for helping me see it a bit more clearly.
Posted by mir
April 12, 2009, 8:48 PM
Hmmmm....I don't often have a different view than most of you here but , on this one...well, I have to disagree. You are looking for something way too hard, that, I just don't think it's there. I'm not a fan of the Koodo ads myself (they kind of freak me out), but I wouldn't go as far as read racist into it. I just checked their site and it's a red haired white guy they've used, whose mouth is just slightly (being facetious here) out of proportion. I still don't really know what it means though.:-)
Owner of two beautiful luscious lips!:-)
Posted by Anisha
April 13, 2009, 9:19 PM
ohhh....just figured it out...it seems they created a bunch of words...one of their ads is 'say no to big billification' or something like that. I guess that's what the big mouths mean.
Posted by Anisha
April 13, 2009, 9:25 PM
Racism may be creeping in a bit. To me though there are more overt things that are much less speculative. When did this philosophy of hyper exercise-mania thin-worship become so mainstream that we use it to sell products completely unrelated to our bodily live ie cell phones? It's a sign that these phones are in the same predicament perfume companies and many clothing companies are. Their product has such limited real value or authentic uniqueness that advertisers resort to myth-focused tactics to make us look.
Posted by Myra
April 16, 2009, 9:56 PM
Has anyone ever submitted a complaint about an ad to Advertising Standards Canada? I heard someone speak on behalf of the agency recently and was surprised to hear how few complaints they receive about ads, despite all the debate/discussion/critique I hear all around me.
According to their report on 2007 (the most recent one on their site)
• 1,445 complaints were received from consumers
• Of these, 193 complaints, involving 56 advertisements, were found by the Consumer Response Councils to contravene the Code
• Retail advertising garnered the highest number of complaints (196)
I do not think this complaints-based process can get to the heart of the problem with advertising, but I do think having a way to file an "official" grievance could be useful.
Here is the link (how to make a complaint: http://www.adstandards.com/en/consume...
Posted by Nicole
April 17, 2009, 6:47 PM
here in montreal they predonminantly feature the ad with the red-headed guy. i've only seen the black girl a handful of times. funny, as a black girl myself, i never once thought racist, but their ads are just so annoying i have thought about complaining several times.
Posted by dalia
April 17, 2009, 9:48 PM
I'd have to say that I agree with Anisha. The ads are quite annoying, but maybe you're reading a little to much into this? And the reason why Ad Standards doesn't get more complaints is because these kinds of things don't usually bother people. It's almost like ignoring someone who talks too much. They're there and they bother you a bit, but they don't matter. I'd be more concerned if there was evidence of racism in their services to be honest.
Posted by Brianne
April 18, 2009, 8:18 AM
I've just visited the Koodo website and used the "Wheel of Savings" to see the various slogans and advertisement pictures. It does seem more apparent to me that perhaps it's a coincidence of location rather than purposeful mockery of black people. I don't feel offended at all by anything I saw. And, again, unless they're doing racist things with their services I don't see a problem. At all.
Posted by Brianne
April 18, 2009, 8:33 AM
Brianne - I think how a company chooses to represent itself through advertising is just as important, if not more so, than how they conduct themselves internally as an organization. Racism isn't just the blatantly harmful things you do to individual employees or customers, it's also about the kinds of messages you send out into the world.
Posted by Cate
April 19, 2009, 10:32 PM
"What also makes the preponderance of black people in this set of ads suspect is that Koodo’s previous campaign didn’t feature a single person of colour."
Not to throw a wrench in the machinery of analysis, but this isn't actually true. The former ad campaigns did feature people of colour.
Posted by Stacey May
April 21, 2009, 5:56 AM
Oh really? I didn't remember seeing any, and didn't see any in the pictures of their ads online.
Posted by Cate
April 21, 2009, 10:59 AM
I flipped a picture of one of these ads to Torontoist, a blog who recently had it off about Virgin radio's transit ads that featured a suicidal radio. Apparently, referencing suicide in relation to the TTC (whose train platforms are occasionally used as a means to the end) is offside.
If you ask me, Koodo's ads are worse. The genre of racist cartoons featuring oversized facial characterics is known as "Jim Crow" ads after the racist laws that existed at the time of their publication. Do a quick Google search and you will see the aesthetic parallels that make these ads ignorant at best.
Posted by MP
April 21, 2009, 12:22 PM
Cate, Stacey May is right, they did "feature people of colour". They had a contest last year, I never made it through the first round:-(, but the winner was going to be in their ads...and he was...he was even in their tv commercials.
http://www.koodokickit.com
Posted by Lauren
April 22, 2009, 10:14 AM
Oh, interesting, I guess I just didn't see them around. I think you should probably be mostly complimented by not having made it into their ads.
Posted by Cate
April 22, 2009, 2:06 PM
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