Ads of the World found this crazy advertisement for Duet Ice Cream made by Russian agency Voskhod. It promises a new flavor of the week: "Black in White" and has a pictures of cartoon Obama standing in front of the Capitol grinning wildly.
This, of course, is an ad for an ice cream bar that swirls chocolate inside of vanilla. The only way this could be more offensive would have involved some cartoon nudity and a cartoon white lady. Not to be outdone, the ice cream packaging itself does hint at that with a a female white head with a pink bow atop it next to a slick looking cartoon black head with sunglasses.
It's not only disturbing that they portrayed our president this way, but that they got our flag so egregiously wrong.
This isn't the first instance of oversees advertising insensitivity. The Germans released 'Obama Fingers' recently--fried chicken bearing a black man's name. And a Japanese company compared Obama to a monkey in this bizarre cell phone ad.
Of course, some of this has to do with cultural misunderstanding. We have no idea if German's are aware of the stereotype involving African-Americans and fried chicken, but to compare an historic movement to a normal ice cream pairing is certainly belittling. We don't use the Russians to sell anything but fall-out shelters in this country.
