Advertisement: Do not judge people with their skin color

Course Code and Name: MSJ11441 Advertising

Visual Plan

Concept:

Two corporate men are sitting in a bar discussing their lives and randomly talking about their female colleagues. During the conversation, they seemed to be criticizing their female colleagues by how they look and their overall appearance. During that point of the discussion, the bartender appears from the front, asking which drink they prefer, vodka or whiskey (we have carefully placed these two drinks to signify colorism in our video). At that time, a voice from nowhere would appear saying, “ভাই সারাজীবন তো সাদা কালোর তফাৎ করলেন, এই তফাৎ টাকি শুধু মানুষের গায়ের রঙ এই?”

Script

​Visuals	Dialogue/Voiceover
Two men are sitting at a table looking at the other side.
They look at each other and start talking.	“বুঝছেন ভাই, অই মেয়েটাকে দেখসেন কিভাবে সাজে আসছে? যতোই সাজুক তাও তো ফর্সা হইতে পারবে না”
A bartender appears from the back and keeps two bottles on the table.	“স্যার, আপনাদের জন্য কি সার্ভ করবো? সাদাটা না কালো টা?”
They look at the bartender and starts talking.	​আরেহ একটা হইলেই হইছে, দুইটাই চলবে
Suddenly a voice appears from the back.	এই যে ভাইয়েরা!! সারাজীবন তো সাদাকালোর তফাৎ করলেন, এই তফাৎটা কি শুধু মানুষের গায়ের রঙ এই?”

Supporting Research data

Colorism, says Wikipedia is “a form of prejudice or discrimination in which people are treated differently based on the social meanings attached to skin color.” This is very true in the case of the subcontinent and more often faced by women than men. However, ideas like the fairer a woman is, the more “beautiful” she is, or the more “marriageable” she is are two common examples of colorism in Bangladesh and the Indian subcontinent.

According to the Daily Star report, Public ridicule of darker-skinned individuals and the institutionalization of the idea that the lighter the skin, the more superior brought into the socio-cultural environment of the subcontinent, the basis of colorism. Hundreds of years of being ruled by lighter-skinned individuals with the Muslim rule of India, other Europeans like the Portuguese, and finally the British (with them institutionalizing the idea), unknowingly or unwillingly, people began the association of fairer skin tone with more significant social superiority. Even years after independence from the British, partition of India, and independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan, the idea of colorism remains deeply rooted systematically in our cultures throughout the subcontinent (Islam, 2019).

A research article published in the BBC also confirms that people of the Indian subcontinent discriminate in favor of light skin color people of the same ethnic group, which formed a social environment where most young generations lack confidence because of their skin color. The world’s most renowned cosmetic product brands see this as an opportunity to make big profits. They promoted colorism and crushed the confidence of people of dark skin tone by capitalizing on this social discrimination. But people are getting conscious about colorism day by day, and big brands had to dump their discriminative promotion strategy (Basu, 2020).

Working plan

The plan is to wrap up the entire shoot within first half of May, hopefully during the weekend. It's going to be a day-long shoot. In this plan, the cinematography part will be handled by Tahzive Islam Avi, Sabiha Syed Archi will be there for the script supervision. Rafi Ahmed will govern the direction part. For the cast, two members will be added in this team . When it comes to the equipment, we are planning to use Fujifilm XT 3, 4k camera for the shoot along with 35mm and 50 mm lenses and external mics to capture the sound. Later, Adobe premiere pro will be used for the post-processing part.

Inform or Persuade to the target audience

This advertisement will air both on Television and online platforms, and our target audience will be mass. Through this, we will address how the problem of racism lies in every socioeconomic culture of the society, actively or passively. Thus, we mustn’t treat this as a problem from one perspective but rather bring change in society’s behavior. Overall, through this advertisement, we wish to inform/inform the socioeconomic culture that racism is still very much rooted in every part of society, even in the corporate upper class who we consider to be more educated and “knowledgeable”.

Reference

Islam, M. R. (2019, January 5). Did colorism always exist in the Indian subcontinent? The Daily Star. https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/perspective/news/did-colourism-always-exist-the-indian-subcontinent-1683064

Basu, B. (2020, August 19). The people fighting ‘light skin’ bias. Page Daily Star report. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200818-colourism-in-india-the-people-fighting-light-skin-bias