Dunkin Don
uts recalled one of its recent ads as a response to public denouncement directed at them for deriding a certain ethnic group.
The American global doughnut company and coffeehouse chain’s Thai branch released an ad poster promoting a new chocolate doughnut targeting local consumers, but its graphic effect was controversial enough to push America’s global human rights watchdog group Human Right Watch to object to its content. The group criticized the poster as “grotesque and racially derogatory.”
The Thailand office didn’t instantly back down from the group’s attack, but as the issue grew in its gravity, the company’s headquarters in the U.S. retreated by posting an official apology on its Internet homepage.
The statement read, “We are trying to have the Thailand office shut down the advertisement. We admit that our best discretion had failed us in preventing such an ad from causing discomfort among black communities.”
The ad, promoting Dunkin’s new doughnut “Charcoal Donut,” shows as its centerpiece a black woman holding a black doughnut after taking a bite. In addition to giving the ad a black monotone in general, the woman put on an eye-catching pink lipstick and hairdo much reminiscent of passé fashions, which critics argued provokes the black ethnic group’s dark history of being singled out for skin color.
uts recalled one of its recent ads as a response to public denouncement directed at them for deriding a certain ethnic group.The American global doughnut company and coffeehouse chain’s Thai branch released an ad poster promoting a new chocolate doughnut targeting local consumers, but its graphic effect was controversial enough to push America’s global human rights watchdog group Human Right Watch to object to its content. The group criticized the poster as “grotesque and racially derogatory.”
The Thailand office didn’t instantly back down from the group’s attack, but as the issue grew in its gravity, the company’s headquarters in the U.S. retreated by posting an official apology on its Internet homepage.
The statement read, “We are trying to have the Thailand office shut down the advertisement. We admit that our best discretion had failed us in preventing such an ad from causing discomfort among black communities.”
The ad, promoting Dunkin’s new doughnut “Charcoal Donut,” shows as its centerpiece a black woman holding a black doughnut after taking a bite. In addition to giving the ad a black monotone in general, the woman put on an eye-catching pink lipstick and hairdo much reminiscent of passé fashions, which critics argued provokes the black ethnic group’s dark history of being singled out for skin color.
