MEDIA AND RACE

“This is just all about MIXING AND MATCHING.” –Bayo ad

Advertisements nowadays are made effective through the use of internet, television, billboards and many more. These are used to campaign certain products in order to be made popular and gain future buyers. But these ads can reflect different interpretations through different perspectives. Certain advertisements are criticized for lack of context, sensitivity and value; and Bayo’s recent advertisement is one of them.Bayo is a clothing brand enjoyed by many Filipinas for their many years of hip and modern collection of different garments. Their most recent ad (as seen above), was named “What’s Your Mix?” and was made public last June 2012. The main theme of this ad was to show people that Bayo can create varieties in their clothing and that there are many clothes to “mix and match” that can fit any personality. They portrayed this message through the use of Filipina models with mixed nationalities. The creators of this poster decided to go for the minimalistic approach, which made it more noticeable, simple and more memorable than others, especially if on a billboard.

This poster for me is a good way to promote the clothing brand, because it is easier to remember, the models used have fresh faces and the concept of having a variety of clothes and accessories to choose from is very inviting. The poster had a good design but I think the words that Bayo used to describe their theme was inappropriate. I think that they were careless when they used those words to define the concept of their collection. It is somehow telling people that being pure Filipino is not enough and that it is better to marry someone from another race. When they stated that “mixing and matching of different nationalities with Filipino blood is almost a sure formula for someone beautiful and world class”, it was a sure sign that it will offend people and cause a controversy. And it did.

If you search “What’s Your Mix Ad Campaign” on Google, most of what you’ll find are different blogs commenting on the way this advertisement affects people through racism. This advertisement, from most blogs, is seen as racist, promoting that it is better to have a mixed nationality in order to become better at something. This ad, although refers to the varieties the clothing brand can offer, can be seen in the wrong light because of the longer explanation behind the said poster. There are people who are open- minded that may accept this as just another form of campaigning. There are those who might feel insulted because they might see it as Filipinos being better off with foreigners in order to conceive better versions of themselves; angry because this campaign promotes racism; and indignified because of the sloppy words and misguiding statements that this advertisement used. Others may also think that Bayo deliberately conceived this form of misleading poster to cause a controversy so that the brand can have free publicity.

But I think that although Bayo is receiving plenty of negative comments, they should still keep this concept for their promotion because it can really pull people to buy from their stores. What they should do is to rephrase or change their interpretation of their poster to lessen the negative comments and misunderstanding that their words have caused.

How about you?

What’s YOUR MIX in this issue?


*images came from the internet, I do not claim ownership over them