Advertising Age presented its annual Book of Tens, featuring two mentions of the NIVEA fiasco that managed to make the racist company look, well, racist. Of course, no references were made to culturally clueless advertising agency Draftfcb for concocting the racist shit.
The Top 10 Stories on AdAge.com in 2011
1. How Charlie Sheen Got His Twitter Account Verified So Fast
2. Super Bowl Ad Review: It Was Bieber Fever and Eminem Epidemic
3. Facebook Turns the ‘Like; Into Its Newest Ad
4. The Demographics of Social Media
5. Chrysler Splits With New Media Strategies Over F-Bomb Tweet
6. The 10 Best Ads to Come out of Steve Jobs’ Reign at Apple
7. Wieden & Kennedy Is Ad Age’s Agency of the Year
8.The Verdict Is in: Super Bowl’s Best-Liked and Most-Recalled Ads
9. Your Followers Are No Measure of Your Influence
10. Nivea Pulls Ad, Apologizes After Racism Accusations
Nivea’s Uncivilized Ad
The company’s campaign for a men’s line included photos of sharp-dressed guys chucking remnants of their former scraggly selves. The problem? Under the photo of a clean-shaven black man tossing what looked like a severed head with an Afro, ran the words “Re-civilize yourself.” After blog outrage, including a charge that Nivea was “unapologetically racist,” the company didn’t even attempt to defend the ad. It simply apologized and vowed never to run it again.
