Nivea’s 'visibly fairer skin' campaign, hit or miss?

It has been interesting to observe the way events have unfolded since Nivea’s ‘visibly fairer skin’ campaign. It does not often happen that brand or marketing related issues gain space in national discourse.

For those in need of a background let me give you the low-down. The nation woke up one day to a brand new campaign by Nivea with the tagline “for visibly fairer skin”. Many people (at least in social media circles) felt and very vehemently expressed their disgust, soon followed the hashtag campaign #PULLITDOWN, captained by FUSE ODG. Few days later 'Captain' ODG declared victory for the opposition, Nivea backed down in face of the ire of the social media public. Victory over a racist campaign! Or was it?

On the surface, it seems that:

- The campaign was one huge miss

- The marketing department goofed in colossal proportion

- The brand will suffer as a result of the campaign

Maybe the exact opposite of all the above are the actual outcomes. Let’s play Inspector Bediako for a minute (you’re dadabee or too young if you don’t know who Inspector Bediako is, you also never played Mario). First of all, big companies like Beiersdorf (owners of the Nivea brand) do not handle campaign planning in-house, they outsource it to the big agencies that create campaigns for the likes of Coca-Cola, Kasapreko, and Guinness e.t.c. These ad agencies are organizations with some of the best marketing talent and terabytes of research data at their disposal. After the campaigns are planned outside they get signed off by teams of people, for a big spending one like the one under investigation you can expect several months of planning. Point is there are too many responsible people responsible for bringing out the ad piece so to assume this was a simple mistake could be a big mistake.

A lot of the backslash the campaign received was due to the opinion that the ad played to the very disturbing music of ‘fairer is better’ at least when it comes to skins, it was a veiled attack on black skins and to that extent blackness.

Becca, Yvonne Nelson, Daddy Lumba and Bukom Banku are few of the celebrities that have taken serious flack for alleged bleaching. In Banku’s case ‘alleged’ is a generous word. So why a “visibly fairer skin” campaign in such a toxic time? How could everyone at the agency and then Nivea have missed it? They didn’t. How did no one flag it? Someone did (in all probability) so what answer did that person get?

It is absurd to believe that all the layers of control and dozens of talented marketers “made a mistake” with a tagline that bold. This in all probability is just playing to the oldest ploy in the PR library “no press is bad press”. Case in point, they’ve got me writing about the brand for free and you reading about them. You may think “well yea but a brand like Nivea is above that”, Wrong! No brand is above publicity and Nivea knows that.

Nivea may have pulled a fast one on us or simply made a mistake (I find the latter very hard to believe), in either case, they’re culpable. But what if the “fairer skin” campaign is not only an illustration of a problem with Nivea but a problem with us? How? Remember that I told you marketing companies have terabytes of data? Marketing campaigns are not embarked on whimsically, they’re serious data-backed decisions. So this is what almost certainly happened, Beiersdorf has data that tells them that the cosmetics consuming market prefers creams that lighten and that the products that occupy that space is in the mind sell (or are selling) better.

If you’re a marketing manager, what will you do with that information? The problem hence is not only that Nivea advertised fairer skin but that we actually do believe that fairer skin is better skin. Marketers don’t sell what people don’t want. In order to stop the supply, we need to kill the demand or Nivea and co will just keep selling us what research data says we want.

Marketing is about owning an identity in the target’s mind. With this campaign, Nivea has cemented a place. They’ve pulled down the billboards but the positioning remains, right up there in your mind, exactly where they want it. The next time you see Nivea you’ll imagine fairer skin. I am not a betting a man but I can assure you Nivea sales would go up not despite this seeming gaffe but because of it.

So Cpt. ODG and friends you’ve won the small battle but Nivea may have won the war as a result, PR works in a funny way. Far from a miss, this was a hit, even more monumental than the miss you’d have thought it was.

Was it responsible marketing? No!

Was it great marketing? Yes!

And the line between the two do often get blurry, it got blurry for Nivea.