Advertisements and sales teams are trying to reach people nearly every day. Millions of dollars are invested into the most creative and innovative means to sell products and services to an attention hungry public. In an effort to remain ahead of the game, many of these companies seek to push the envelope through use of humor or political commentary. It doesn’t always work. Here are some of the most racist and offensive advertisements ever made.
1. Intel tells African Americans to bow down
Right off the bat you can see the problem most people, excluding Intel, had with this advertisement. This advertisement by Intel is interesting as the company claimed it was not their intent to offend anyone. Having a bunch of black men (runners for some reason) bowing down to a white man for some reason didn’t raise any eyebrows before it was put up. I find this a little difficult to believe as there isn’t even a picture of a computer in the ad. Someone apparently dropped the effing ball really hard in marketing.
2. South Oak Dodge dealer beats up Asians
I love me some local commercials which are usually delightfully cheesy. This is no exception. For whatever reason, car dealerships tend to have incredibly low budgets which results in a usually terrible but enjoyable bit of entertainment. In this particular example, South Oak Dodge saves a poor woman from foreign imported cars, represented by a man in a terrible fat suit with knockoff Elvis hair. “Super Don” saves her by punching the sumo wrestler into the air who later curses him in the exact format of a 50’s comic strip.
3. Chinese Laundry detergents cleans up African Americans
This is a truly awful ad designed by a marketing team who’ve clearly never heard of racism before. In the advertisement, a young Chinese woman takes a dirty black man and forces him into a laundry machine. After several minutes a clean Chinese man emerges to the woman's delight. The implications are unpleasant and the detergent company Qiaobi, has received a large amount of flak for the advertisement. The company issued an apology after the commercial was released to western media though perhaps not as unexpectedly as they should have been.
4. Hacienda recommends drinking the Kool Aid
Just when I thought a dumber advertisement couldn’t exist, Hacienda proves me wrong. This one is nearly unbelievable for the sheer insensitivity and overall poor planning behind it. I cannot fathom a way that associating a company with the Jonestown Massacre would in any way promote business of any kind. For any reader who may not be familiar, the Jonestown Massacre was a mass suicide performed in Jonestown, Guyana in which roughly 900 hundred people drank poisoned Kool-Aid giving us the phrase, “drinking the Kool-Aid.” The team at Hacienda apparently tried to capitalize on mass killings for some reason. What gets me is the tag line “To die for” at the bottom as if it were a little f*** you to the sensitivity meter that earns this the number one spot.
