Asians Racially Abused by IPAF?

 

Decision Made by Advertising Standards Board

An “Excuse” campaign was launched on August 2011 by the IPAF which was aimed at clearing the assumption that piracy was practiced by only few people in the society. However, this led to different views from the public. There were complaints that the ad portrayed racism against the Asians. Dan Wyllie, an Australian actor, played different people in the ad which were drawn from the Australian society. In a certain scene, the actor impersonates an Asian student which creates the thought that Asians have been racially discriminated.

I agree with the decision which was made by the Advertising Standards Board. It dismissed the claim that the campaign was racially discriminative to the Asians. The advertisement depicted an actor playing different roles of people from different social and ethnic backgrounds. It combined different characters that had the same idea about piracy and hence it was not discriminative towards the Indians.

The Board found the advertisement not to have violated the section 2 of the Advertiser Code of Ethics. The campaign did not talk only of the Asians but it addressed issues of different people who had the same inappropriate opinions about piracy. If the TV firm had intentions to racially discriminate the Asians, it would have begun within the firm itself. It has over 50000 Asians workers contributing 6.1b to the economy. It could not be concluded that the advertisement had ill intentions towards the Asians and yet the firm has so many Asian workers. Moreover, it was the first time the firm was experiencing such a case after a long period of service under the same management committee. If the advertisement was intended to discriminate the Asians, then the firm could not have made any efforts of apologizing. The advertisers though they were sure that they had not violated section 2 of the Advertiser Code of Ethics; they apologized for having offended some members of the public.

They did not stand with the decision of the board that they were innocent but they humbled themselves to solve their conflict with the public. They explained that the roles of an actor were not meant to be understood literally but to pass an intended message to the audience. Throughout the advertisement, the actor did not only refer to the Asians but also dressed other people of different social and ethnic backgrounds. To end the misunderstanding, they explained that the success of playing different roles could only be made possible through using different costumes. They used different make up, wardrobe, voice talent, and context and background scenes to make it possible and not to ridicule the Asians. The communication was light-hearted and aimed to pass the relevant information to the public. It had a comedic approach and hence it was not supposed to be taken seriously.

The board took time to evaluate the possibility of the advertisement having violated the Advertiser Code of Ethics and finally dismissed the claim. The ad was symbolic and did not target any section of the community nor race.

Work Cited

Mitchell. The Advertising Age Encyclopedia of Advertising. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003.

Mitchell. The Associated Press Guide to Internet Research and Reporting. Cambridge: MA: Pereus Publishing, 2001.