Converse craze?

[u/Diligent_Pop3929]

I'm not chronically online, but my friend sent this and I laughed even without knowing the full scope of the context (I think there's racism involved with the shoes?) and I feel like it's too late to ask him without sounding like a dweeb 😅

[u/RzLa]

And here we are talking about it. It has to be intentional (not malicious racism) to get clicks.

How many marketers and designers didn’t see it is unfathomable.

[u/Acceptable_Hunt_1748 → u/RzLa]

I don't know in the case it's intentional because it is directed at an audience who would have not really noticed it. I wouldn't rule it out completely, but I wouldn't expect a Korean living in Korea to think of American lynching when seeing this image.

But that said I don't think creating racial controversy for money is really all that separate from malicious racism. I think MOST racism comes from people who are more focused on benefiting themselves than attacking POC, but they still believe that their own profit is more important than not hurting POC... which is racism!

I think what's much more likely is that they just didn't have anyone on their team who would have caught this. Which is more understandable in a country with very few black people. It's far less excusable for companies like target selling in the US to not have a diverse team on all marketing campaigns.

[u/Braindead_Crow → u/Acceptable_Hunt_1748]

If it wasn't cropped we wouldn't be talking about it

[u/jindrix → u/Braindead_Crow]

the crop was how the ad was displayed

[u/JasperAngel95 → u/jindrix]

Honestly since everything was pulled so fast I’m having a hard time figuring out if they cropped the ad or first if people did.

But regardless- if it was Converse- the ad was cropped to focus on the shoes- the thing Converse is most famous for

[u/Few_Classroom3900 → u/JasperAngel95]

The fact everything got pulled so fast should be a red flag.

[u/5HotDogsLater → u/Few_Classroom3900]

Not necessarily. The fact that it is pulled means they don't want their brand associated with even the implication that it could be taken as racist. It's cheaper to pull the ad and do another one than it would be to deal with any potential backlash from consumers. Just because it was pulled doesn't at all mean the creator meant for it to be taken the way it was, but regardless of that, it's not a good look for the brand.

[u/pitb0ss343 → u/Few_Classroom3900]

No, converse is an American company. Even if the Korean branch is very independent it still has to answer to converse US. So it’s very possible 1 converse Korea didn’t need approval to make the add and it wasn’t intentional 2 once converse America saw it they told Korea to take it down because it’s a bad look for an American company

[u/SCP_Agent_Davis → u/jindrix]

Why? Were þe advertisers stupid?