Advertising for Trouble

Milk campaign sours blacks, Finnair's crashes

The line between what is tasteful and offensive, humorous and insulting in advertising seems, like the line between treason and righteous rebellion, to be largely a matter of timing. Witness a current ad campaign by the California Milk Advisory Board and an aborted one by Finnair, the Finnish airline. The milk ads, which a few years ago might have seemed merely innocuous, are under fire for alleged sexism and racism; the Finnair ad has been withdrawn because of protests that it made light of a subject of growing concern to feminists, judges and others: wife beating.

The milk ads, in Mademoiselle magazine and Western supermarkets, feature a luscious young woman in sportswear, with copy touting both "the milk-white look" in fashion and the virtues of drinking cow juice. Why would that seem unwholesome? Well, to begin with, complains a collection of California and national consumer, women's and black groups, the ads present women as sex objects. Worse, as racist sex objects. In the view of the protesters, the ads imply that only white women are desirable. Says Consumers Union Lawyer Luana Martilla: "The implicit message is that milk-white skin equates with health, beauty and other positive qualities." Counters the milk board's Ted Shields: "The milk-white look is in. It's the 'in' look in fashion this spring. That's all we meant." It is all a bit like crying over spilled milk. The ad series ends this week and will be replaced by one proclaiming: "Time for milk." It will be difficult for anyone to make something out of that.

The Finnair ad, seeking to convince Americans that "great vacations start with flying Finnish," featured a fanciful headline about the invention of the sauna by a Finn who discovered that his wife "loved" being locked in a smokehouse and beaten with birch leaves. Lawyer Karen DeCrow, former president of the National Organization for Women, conceded in a letter to Finnair North American General Manager Leif Lundstrom that the airline had intended only to be funny--but added that wife beating was no laughing matter, either in Finland or the U.S. If Finnair did not drop the ad, said DeCrow, "we women will have to start our great vacations with one of your competitors." In a nonplused reply, Lundstrom asserted that "we never considered that such a headline ... would have been taken out of context." Nonetheless, his consciousness presumably raised, he agreed to withdraw the ad.

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