Panasonic Ad Found To Be Photoshop Of Black Man’s Body With White Man’s Face
Image via ID 85538790 © Alexey Novikov | Dreamstime.com
If there’s one thing brands haven’t learned not to do, it’s to whitewash models in advertisements. Unfortunately, Panasonic failed to spot the problem before releasing a new campaign for its SoundSlayer speaker. And it’s not pretty.
It turns out that the company had taken a perfectly good stock image of an African American man playing video games, with pizza and a beer, and photoshopped a white man’s head over his body. The art director then lightened the original model’s skin tone to match the new face, it seems.
What? Well, no one knows why either. According to Input, despite the edited image very clearly having the same shirt, creases, and angles as the original, the file’s EXIF information still reads: “Young African American man eating pizza, drinking beer, and playing video games.” In fact, it’s still available on Getty Images.
Strangely, no one has found out where the photoshopped head has come from. It’s probably another stock picture, but with just the man’s head, it’s difficult to find the exact image it was nicked from.
After the public discovered the absurd, and frankly disturbing, switcheroo, Panasonic removed every promotional item featuring the image in question. Though it’s hard to see how the brand can gloss over this fiasco, considering it literally whitewashed a model in 2021. Yikes.
Here's a quick juxtaposition to make it even clearer: this Black man's head was digitally replaced. pic.twitter.com/X8Ac1IlDu6
— Sean Hollister (@StarFire2258) August 26, 2021
[via Input, cover image via ID 85538790 © Alexey Novikov | Dreamstime.com]
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