Last Updated on 19th January 2024 by Caroline Haye
Marketing products AND awareness
Advertising is all around us all the time. Each new year – and 2024 will be no exception – advertisers bombard us with hundreds of thousands of advertising messages. They start with the January sales. Then come spring breaks, summer vacations and every imaginable activity and event connected to outdoor sports. Before we know what happened, it’s back-to-school gear and tempting holiday ads, not just for the winter season but the following summer too. Then, as we approach Halloween and Bonfire Night, it steps up a gear. Next comes the build-up to Thanksgiving, which morphs seamlessly into Black Friday (week) and Cyber Monday (week). The momentum accelerates into Christmas and New Year. And, before we can recover from that little lot, the January sales are upon us once more. [Phew]. In other words, there is absolutely no let-up, at any time of year, from the marketing images, offers and slogans that assail us via every medium possible. Advertising today is a massive, expensive, lucrative, influential and ubiquitous industry. And it is one that continues to grow, evolve… and surprise. A welcome example of this being a notable shift over recent years away from selling concepts of flawless, idealised perfection and towards individuality and inclusivity. Hence the emergence of ethnic and gender diversity, disability and visual difference (including vitiligo) in advertising campaigns.
Brands that have used models with vitiligo in their ad campaigns
In no particular order these brands include the following:
- Dermablend
- Covergirl
- Primark
- Holland & Barrett
- Rebecca Violette
- Diesel
- Desigual
- Marc Jacobs
- Dove
- Gilette Venus
- Missguided
- Gap
- Claire’s
- Sheertex
- Starbucks
- Puma
- Fendi
- Forever 21
- NYX
- Urban Outfitters
- Pattern Beauty
- Glossier
- Aerie
Inclusivity in adverts is good for advertisers
Have you noticed how many mainstream ad campaigns currently feature models and actors of colour and messages featuring gender diversity? Some may say that this particular bandwagon is rather too overcrowded for anyone’s comfort at the moment. A case of companies trying to outdo each other at being seen to be inclusive. To the point, perhaps, of over-representing minorities. Some experts believe this is too much of a good thing. And others think it has so far missed the mark.
Then again, it sometimes takes a period of over-compensating and trial and error to correct a serious imbalance. Added to which, if advertisers see inclusivity as a badge of honour, that’s surely no bad thing for society. And it is evidently no bad thing for them either… Otherwise, they would not be spending so much of their valuable advertising budget on aspiring to it.
The same level of representation isn’t nearly so much in evidence when it comes to disability and visual difference. But there has certainly been a very welcome move in this direction over the past few years. And it is encouraging to see how vitiligo has claimed a respectable share of the attention.
Featuring visible difference in marketing is good for consumers
Since its earliest days, advertising has used ideals of perfection to sell goods and services. Back when the only media for adverts consisted of posters, pamphlets, newspapers, and eventually radio, the negative repercussions of this would have been limited. But, by the time TV, film and glossy magazines had become the most influential tools for marketing, consumers found themselves well and truly under pressure to measure up to unrealistic ideals… If your home, car, job, clothes or appearance didn’t compare to the images being portrayed, you felt that something was wrong with your life. Something that you could only correct by making a purchase. Selling a stylised kind of perfection was, and still is, a persuasive way to market products. But it can also create quite damaging levels of dissatisfaction and a negative self-image in consumers, especially in today’s digital world where anyone can manipulate their image with a simple app or filter. So the portrayal of real people, with real lives and real features in mainstream advertising is a breath of fresh air that goes a little way, at least, to counterbalancing all that fake perfection. And, in doing so, it helps us all to realise that every one of us is flawed. Or rather, that there is no such thing as normal.
Including people with vitiligo in advertisements is good for vitiligo awareness
So, marketing campaigns featuring people with visible differences certainly help to relieve the incessant imagery of air brushed perfection that continues to bombard us every day. Not just that, but they help to break down prejudice and misconceptions by raising awareness and understanding of each others’ differences. Whether the hard-nosed advertising industry would ever have taken any notice of vitiligo if not for public interest in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death and the publicity created by ambassadors like model Winnie Harlow and TV broadcaster Lee Thomas is doubtful. But the fact is that vitiligo is gradually making its way into society’s consciousness, largely thanks to a growing number of vocal champions, celebrities and support organisations, whose mission it is to raise awareness. And advertisers – intentionally or otherwise – are playing a part in this process too… Which, in my view, has to be a good thing.
What do you think? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below.
