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Original Ad

Initial Analysis of Ad

Doves body lotion advertisement illustrates three images of women with the Dove body lotion being pictured in the first two images with a black woman in a dark shirt taking off her shirt to reveal a white woman in a white shirt. This ad is basically displaying a transformation of a black woman to a white woman through the use of Dove’s body lotion. Messages from this ad could range from dark people are dirty and white people are clean and pure, inside every black woman there is a white woman, and the colour of skin can be washed away using body lotion. It is remarkable a company of this size couldn’t identify the obvious racism of this ad. The idea that dark people are dirty is a very old racist point of view which this ad is pushing on viewers, injustice to people of colour because these racist views have long existed and it is insensitive to display this in order to sell products. Additionally, soap is known to transform something that’s dirty into clean, and clean is good. In a similar sense, this ad shows the same transformation, but with women. Inferring dark women are dirty and bad, while white women are clean and good. This add particularly touches on intersectionality as it infers black women, in particular, are dirty if this was a black man we may view it as a message towards just people of colour but here its specifically a woman in the ad. Additional messages like the one in Dove’s ad may amplify these discriminatory views of black women and further disadvantage them in our society. 

Jammed Ad

Written Explanation of Jamming process/philosophy

My jamming of this ad was to change it to be more upfront about the potential meaning of this ad. Given that Dove did not have any initial text to go along with the ad, which may have helped mitigate this injurious social message I added text to be more direct in conveying one of the offensive messages the original ad does. My text is offensive but direct attempting to highlight the absurdity of this ad,  “Dark people are dirty. White people are clean and pure. Lets become pure with Doves body lotion”. I also added a price of $0.01 per bottle. The text attempts to demonstrate the magnitude of what’s unspoken in Doves ad. I use words like dirty and clean to directly convey what the ad is subtly conveying. The price of $0.01 for a bottle indicates how cheap this product is because it’s obviously a sham and has no benefit to consumers what this ad suggests. As such, the cent for a bottle illustrates that this product is poor and won’t do what the ad suggests it will. I wanted this to evoke a sense of shock in people and create ownership of the message behind this ad through being direct, unlike the original ad which Dove said: “It meant no harm when creating”. My philosophy is attempting to be clear with the message I’m sending as Dove and how cheap and insignificant such a product is. On a higher level, I’m conveying the message that if someone were to try to sell “A skin colour transformation product” it would be worth a penny because its impossible and this product is practically waste. In a society where skin colour is something which society remains to penalize one for, suggesting a way to become white and clean is hurtful, to people of colour like myself and it’s better to outright be direct with such harmful messaging. My jamming method aimed to be direct.