A new television spot for Smirnoff Vodka has drawn criticism from some members of the African-Canadian community, who have described the ad as racist.

The ad, created by Toronto-based Roche Macaulay & Partners Advertising and shot in South Africa, features a young African tribesman who – in a nod to ’80s cult film The Gods Must be Crazy – stumbles upon a Smirnoff bottle in the middle of the desert after it drops mysteriously out of the sky.

Each time the man peers through the bottle, his indigenous landscape is transformed into a distinctly Western image: two Africans sitting underneath a tree become a pair of males – one white, the other black – on a beach; an African woman walking alongside a muddy pond morphs into a stylish woman walking alongside a chic poolside setting; a group of dancing natives, in traditional garb, give way to hip-hop youths dancing in an urban setting.

Meanwhile, Share, a newspaper serving the black and Caribbean communities in Toronto, recently published letters from readers complaining about the images portrayed in the ad. One reader wrote that the ads suggest ‘that anything unfortunate enough to be born Black will only get better by turning White.’

According to Shelley Brown, director of strategic planning at Roche Macaulay, the spot, which will also run in Brazil and Kenya, simply stresses sociability and surprise, with the device of the bottle cropping up in an unexpected location.

Although the agency did discuss the cultural message contained in the ad, Brown maintains the central bottle-gazer is not seduced by Western society, and that he, in fact, puts the bottle down at the end of the commercial.

‘We talked about it, but we felt very strongly that this character is someone who has a very strong sense of himself and who he is and what he believes in and what culture he’s a part of and what’s important to him,’ she says. ‘And the question you can ask is: Is he fascinated or does he think he knows better? What exactly is he saying at the end there? And we deliberately left that open for people to think about on their own.’

Credits:

Agency: Roche Macaulay & Partners Advertising

Client: Smirnoff Vodka (United Distillers & Vinters, London)

Creative Director: Geoffrey Roche

Art director: Simon Tuplin

Copywriter: Peter Gardiner

Media: Television

Markets: Canada, Brazil, Kenya

Launch date: Oct. 18, 1999

Length of Run: To the end of December 1999