Heinz ‘Racist’ Ads Remind Us Why We Need DEI

Source: Jena Ardell / Getty

H.J. Heinz Company has, unbeknownst to itself, given us a master class on why DEI matters--and why we need more Black people in advertising. That’s the only reason I can think of for why Heinz has come under fire for not one, but two recently released ads that have been dragged across social media as racist at worst and insensitive towards the Black community at best.

The first ad was brought to the public’s attention by Nels Abbey, a writer for The Guardian, who spotted it on a billboard while waiting for a train at Vauxhall tube station in London.

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From Bossip:

The oversized billboard depicts a wedding scene where a Black woman is gleefully eating a forkful of sauce-dripping pasta noodles while her white groom looks on. Also pictured are two older white people who are assumed to be his [horrified] parents–mother and father… The only other person in the picture is an older Black woman who one would reasonably assume represents the Black bride’s mother. However, no father is depicted.

One of the most annoying things about this ad is the way white people will respond to Bossip’s (and a whole bunch of Black people’s) criticism of its racist stereotyping. If you’ve spent even a day on the anti-Black side of the internet, you already know the justification: playing around in Black people’s faces by pointing to statistics that show the disproportionate number of Black children who grow up in single-parent homes.

Meanwhile, they will conveniently (and, in many instances, intentionally) ignore the myriad of studies that show that most Black fathers who aren’t married to the mothers of their children are not only present and active in their children’s lives, but they’re more active than white fathers who do not live in their children’s homes.

“Admittedly, the stats on single parenthood look notably vicious for Black communities. The figure in England and Wales increased from 48.5% in 2011 to 51.0% in 2021,” Abbey wrote for The Guardian. “However, in Black communities, the synonymizing of single parenthood with deadbeat fatherhood is an error. As in all communities, it is not uncommon for Black or multi-racial parents to break up or to be unmarried, but it is… unusual for Black fathers not to play a super-active role in the lives of their children. The stereotypes we inherited from yesteryear are yet to be updated and are crowded out by statistics that don’t paint a full picture.”

Source: Catherine Delahaye / Getty

Sorry Not Sorry

The conflation of unmarried Black fathers who don’t live in their children’s homes with also being absent Black fathers,  isn’t a simple oversight, it’s racism. That’s why white conservatives across politics, media and social media cite it every time they need an excuse to be racist without admitting they’re racist. They pretend they’re not being resentful white bigots by claiming, “It’s not racist if it’s true,” but the actual truth is that they do just enough “research” to seemingly vindicate the stereotypical beliefs they already held. And they refuse all the other evidence-based data.

Anyway, Heinz issued an apology, telling The Independent: “We always appreciate members of the public’s perspective on our campaigns. We understand how this ad could have unintentionally perpetuated negative stereotypes. We extend our deepest apologies and will continue to listen, learn, and improve to avoid this happening again in the future.”

Then something similar happened again a few days into “the future.”

Not long after apologizing for the first ad, Heinz put out a new ad part of its “Heinz Smile” campaign showing a Black person grinning ear to ear while wearing smeared ketchup around their mouth, which somebody — anybody — in the company’s advertising room should have noticed bore a striking resemblance to blackface and Sambo figurines.

Now, it’s important to note that the “Heinz Smile” campaign also features white people and people of other races with their mouths governed in red ketchup. Still, one would think that working in advertising would make one familiar with the power of optics. But here we are.

@willdomingue

Heinz’s recent brand campaign “Smile” broke the internet with the controversial Blackface. What’s your thoughts on the new Heinz campaign do you think the imagery strongly reminiscent of black face? #heinz #designlab #advertisingtiktok #advertising #marketing #heinzhalloween #heinzad #joker2 #brandtok

♬ original sound – Will Domingue

How many people said ‘looks good!”???

First of all, these photos look creepy no matter who is in them. I can’t tell if this is a Heinz ad or the promotional posters for the next Jordan Peele movie.

More to the point, if you smear red coloring all over a white person’s mouth, people may think they look like The Joker or maybe an evil circus clown. Put that same makeup on a Black person and the first thing people are going to connect it to a particular racist, horrific, exploitive and oppressive era in Black history in America.

Heinz is a huge international corporation. Just think about how many eyes an ad like this passes before getting the green light. How is it possible that someone at Heinz did not realize the ad featuring the Sambo-reminiscent Black guy with bright red lips was going to be seen independently of the photos featuring Caucasian models? Or possible that someone didn’t ealize that the image of a slobbering Black bride who appears to a completely fatherless daughter, could possibly–just possibly–be viewed as racist? How is it possible that no one said, “Wrong direction, team.”

I’m sure someone did notice. But it didn’t matter enough to stop the ad from running.

We need more Black people in advertising, y’all. It’s that simple.

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