Cultural Norms

Case 2:

Is it ethical to exploit cultural norms and values to promote a product?

Julio Ue

June 1st 2012

Fair & Lovely from Hindustan Lever Ltd. (HLL) was a top selling skin lightening cream in India. The brand dominated the market with a 90% share before the Fairever brand from CavinKare´s started to gain market from HHL. Under pressure to remain the market leader on this segment HHL increased its advertising efforts by launching a series of ads reinforcing the idea that the fairer your skin is the more beautiful or the more successful you are.

Culturally, skin color has been a powerful theme in India and most of Asia, where fair skin is considered the aspired and ideal look, representing most of the time a higher social status. This has been long recognized by other global cosmetic companies, even before the existence of HLL, which developed and sell whitening products to those markets. So, I do not think that developing a product to conform to a certain culture, and exploiting the norms and values of each particularly culture in advertising efforts is unethical as long as the ads do not try to denigrate or mislead the consumers.

From the article, I don´t think the advertising strategy HHL adopted for Fair & Lovely was ethical, because featuring a woman that could be more successful financially by having fairer skin, portraying scenes with the fairer individual happier than the darker individual, and featuring a darker skinned women unable to find a job that as soon as they lighten their complexion they get a job are all examples of discrimination and prejudice.

The role AIDWA (All India Women´s Democratic Association) played when appealing to the National Human Rights Commission alleging that the HLL´s ads (1) were racist, (2) promoted son preference, and (3) were insulting to working women, was crucial to the whole process, especially to HHL in terms of lessons learned. Conclusion was that the campaign violated the Cable and Television Act...