Cultural understanding plays an important role in advertising. Walsh (2006) complies by stating that decoding text involves social-cultural recognition. Advertisers have to first understand the community’s norm and beliefs before publishing or broadcasting content in order to prevent misleading ideologies to be spread.
Ironically, a Malaysian advertisement produced locally that was to serve as public service announcement commercial caused a stir in Malaysia society as the content was deemed to be racist. Article titled ‘Media Prima pulls out ‘racist’ Ramadan ads’ featured on Themalaysianinsider.com published on August 2 2011 highlights the issue of cultural context in advertising.
Malaysia, being a multiracial country with diverse culture has different celebrations throughout the year. This time during the Muslim’s Ramadan month, Media Prima broadcasted an ad that portrays the Chinese race in a bad limelight causes the rage of public. An advertisement should be free from stereotyping to avoid controversies. Eventually, the commercial was forced to axe down as it is received heavy criticism.
O’Barr (2007) mentions that advertisement should not include misleading meanings. It is important for advertisers to produce commercials that are honest and objective to prevent wrong interpretations made by the consumers. Furthermore, Spence & Heekeren ( 2007) states that advertisements should avoid stereotyping by race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance or social status.. Clearly, the Media Prima advertisement failed to so as the content of the advertisement is highlighting the wrong doings of another race when in reality, the ad should be in a more positive manner to highlight the goods of the festivity. Also, the message of the advertisement could easily cause mislead foreigners by making them having a bad impression towards the Chinese race as they have no prior knowledge to the culture.
In conclusion, advertisements placement should be done carefully before it goes to the public. Producers have to understand the cultural context of a community as well as abide the ethics of advertising to prevent such issue to be repeated. It is never a good idea to damage other’s reputation publicly as it will cause controversies and receive heavy criticism to whoever it concern.
- Spence, E & Heekeren, B 2005, Advertising Ethics, Pearson Publication, USA
- Walsh, M 2006, ‘Textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p.24-37.
- Yow, H.C 2011, Media Prima pulls out 'racist' Ramadan ads, viewed on 12th November 2011, <http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/print/malaysia/media-prima-pulls-out-racist-ramadan-ads/>
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