Retail pharmacy chain in South Africa denies taunting competitor with advert amid race scandal
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 15, 2020 at 16:00
- Updated on September 15, 2020 at 16:06
- 3 min read
- By AFP South Africa
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As reported by AFP, Clicks Pharmacy came under fire in early September after running an online promotion for shampoo brand TRESemmé that depicted black hair as “dry & damaged” and “frizzy & dull”, and blonde hair as “normal”.
Shortly after the promotion was launched, the alleged Dis-Chem ad appeared online on September 7, 2020.
“Shop Now at Dis-Chem Online. You’re Just a Few Clicks Away,” reads the superimposed text on an image of a smiling black woman with natural hair. Designed to look like an advert, the picture features Dis-Chem's logo in the top-left corner.
The purported ad has been shared more than 2,000 times on Facebook, including here, here, and here, and in hundreds of tweets. It was seen by many as an opportunistic response by Dis-Chem to a controversy which had engulfed rival company Clicks a few days earlier, starting on September 4, 2020.
Opinion was divided among those who saw it as insensitive and those who found it funny.
AFP Fact Check traced the earliest reference of the alleged advert to this archived tweet, but the account has since been deleted.
Dis-Chem spent days responding to hundreds of tweets with a standard denial that read: “Hi there, this ad was not published by Dis-Chem Pharmacies.”
Hi there, this ad was not published by Dis-Chem Pharmacies.
— Dis-Chem (@Dischem) September 7, 2020
Lynne Blignaut, who manages the social media and community engagement team for Dis-Chem, told AFP Fact Check that the “distasteful” advert did not come from the company.
“Our content is created by an agency and is approved weeks in advance. If you take one look at our social media pages you’ll know that it’s not real,” she said.
Blignaut noted that the Dis-Chem logo used in the picture is not high-resolution and that the advert is not in line with the company’s font or general corporate identity.
She added that the purported advert, which was only seen on social media, also doesn’t appear on Dis-Chem’s website or official Twitter, Facebook or Instagram accounts.
A reverse image search shows that the photo of the woman in the yellow dress has been available online as a free stock image since at least December 2018.
Clicks campaign sparks protests
The furore stemmed from these images used in a Clicks online promotion and led to hashtags like #RacismMustFall and #BlackHairIsNormal, with black women posting images of their afros on Twitter.
mhmmm idk hey... pic.twitter.com/a1VgxThTBh
— aretlhabetse. (@pelomasebe) September 3, 2020
Protests were staged outside Clicks Pharmacy stores countrywide, forcing them to close on September 9, 2020 as some demonstrations turned violent.
Multinational goods supplier Unilever, which owns TRESemmé South Africa, issued a statement apologising for using images that “promote racist stereotypes about hair” in the marketing campaign. Despite this, a growing list of retailers have since pulled the hair products brand from their shelves.
Leaders from political party Economic Freedom Fighters, which organised the protests, met with Unilever executives on September 10, 2020, when it was agreed that Unilever would remove all TRESemmé products from retail stores for 10 days “as a demonstration of remorse”.
Joint Statement of The EFF And Unilever On The Tresemme-SA Racist Image pic.twitter.com/IWxr93TSka
— Economic Freedom Fighters (@EFFSouthAfrica) September 10, 2020
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