The Executive Optical (EO) billboard is getting some attention for being racist.
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| Executive Optical Ad |
Twitter user @shihboy posted the above photo of the billboard with the message: “This is so much worse than the Bayo campaign!”
Other Twitter users agreed that the ad was racist and likened it to the Bayo campaign that created a big noise for the perceived discrimination.
The
EO ad shows a pretty girl accepting the bouquet of yellow flowers from a
dark-skinned bespectacled man, while ignoring the bunch of cauliflower
being offered by the white-skinned suitor.
I guess there’s just a
mistake of interpretation from those bashing the ad. My own take is
that it’s not about the skin color that’s being talked about in the
campaign, but the difference having a good vision would make in our
lives.
The dark-skinned man, obviously having a better vision
because of his eyeglasses, chose the right kind of flower for the girl.
The white-skinned man, on the other hand, chose a bunch of vegetables
mistaking it for a bouquet of white flowers, thus, he was ignored by the
pretty girl.
Meanwhile, EO has denied that the ad was racist.
According to Karen de Asis, Chief Brand Strategist of MKS Marketing
Consulting and Training Corp., the company that conceptualized EO’s ads,
they have no intention “of presenting racism at all.”
“It’s a
presentation of a real-life situation,” Karen explained. “The two
suitors have contrasting personalities. Both are Filipinos. It’s not
about color. The ad is simply about poor eyesight.”
