Obviously Pocahontas taught us nothing
As 2019 comes to a close, it’s important for us to reflect on all the dumb marketing decisions that were made this year. Honestly, it’s like large companies learn nothing from each other’s mistakes or have any common sense. A controversial marketing campaign launched this year, and one that I missed until now, was Dior launching its scent Sauvage in honor of Native American history….. I really want us to reflect on the idea of a perfume scent being titled Sauvage to honor Native Americans. Had we not learned anything from Pocahontas! Did we not listen to the words of Colors of the Wind? Of course, there are many inaccuracies and problems with Disney’s Pocahontas but that’s not the point. I just want to know who is making the decisions for these large corporations?
Now just in case you’re in the dark like I was, in April of this year, French design company Dior launched a campaign for their new perfume scent Sauvage in honor of the history and struggle of Native Americans with Johnny Depp as the face of the campaign. We the campaign launched, the brand faced a lot of backlash from people on twitter, rightfully so. Turns out people don’t think that Native Americans should be associated with the term savage even if it is in French.
In response to all the negativity, the brand took down all the ads off their social media pages and quickly tried to do damage control stating that they collaborate with an indigenous group on the ad and that Depp was an honorary citizen of a Native American nation.
There were many things the brand could have done to avoid this issue, the main way is to not launch the campaign at all however a good start could have been them not naming the scent Sauvage. The truth is when a brand is launching a campaign like this surrounding a sensitive topic they need to proceed with caution and be sure they are doing all they can to approach this with care.
In the meantime, let’s all listen to the Colors of the Wind and learn from Dior’s mistakes.
