In response to Minyoung’s post on the ethical issue of marketing ads that showcase the fragile nature and weakness of Africans, often by showing an image of a malnutritioned African child that is looking weakly at the camera, staring at you as you look at the poster and often resulting in feeling a tugging at your heartstrings, as if it is your responsibility to donate to the not-for-profit group to ensure that the child will survive. This type of pity marketing, while effective is, as Minyoung stated, “distorting the image of the people of Africa beyond their control is unethical and manipulative”.
By constantly showcasing such images to guilt-trip people into donating to not-for-profit organizations, marketers achieve their ultimate goal of receiving money. However, because of such images, Africa will be forever be embedded in people’s minds as a malnutritioned, fragile, and weak country that is at a stagnated state of forever not being able to get out of the rat race of poverty, even though they may have many other strengths as well. While it achieves the marketer’s goals of obtaining money for the not-for-profit group, I believe that the marketing tactic is unethical as a leaves a false image of Africa to the people who see the advertisements. As well, because so many of these ads were used by many different groups, I believe the effect these type of ads have on people have drastically decreased as people see them everywhere and thus have become immune to them (no longer feeling the guilt-trip they may have felt when they first saw these ads for the first couple times). Instead, if marketers showcased the beauty of Africa like Minyoung said, then the messages to be conveyed across to the target markets will be much stronger because people will be able to see that Africa is indeed improving and have come a long way from the malnutrioned state and fragile nature of the country due to lack of resources and poverty such as the ad below.
