While stereotypes and racism are rampant in everyday life, you’d expect brands to be a little more careful when it comes to their advertisements. Keeping up with irresponsible adverts can be rather taxing, but when a major airline company thinks it is okay to blatantly and unabashedly promote racism, silence is no longer an option.
The ad in question is one made by Lufthansa India, yes the famous airline that believes in ‘Nonstop You’ has unleashed non-stop stereotyping. Centred around a coach who is devising a ‘secret plot to defeat Indians by thinking like Indians’ the ad is fairly nonsensical. What would you even expect from a brand that makes an advertisement about defeating the country they are demanding business from?
If you weren’t already offended enough, the ad only gets way more offensive from this moment on. The coach makes his team eat tandoori naan, because that is what we Indians eat every single day. Remember how your mother installed a tandoor at home so she could make sure you eat this everyday and have an unusually hard time tearing a piece while you are at it?
Up next: the team is taught bhangra. Nobody knows why a team that needs to defeat India on the field is doing everything aside of practicing their game, though. Or maybe, that is because if they were shown practicing, fitting racism into the plot would become extremely difficult.
Now we do not know if the ad was actually trying to embrace India and it’s culture, but if they were the depiction is poor and so is the research. Either way, halfway through the ad you are expecting coach to teach team how to charm snakes. Yes, that racist it is. Think we’re exaggerating? Watch the ad for yourself.
