Arnold Worldwide Portrays Black Man as Fool in New Fidelity Ad
April 26th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
In this Fidelity commercial, Arnold Worldwide portrays a middle-aged black man as a clueless fool. Fortunately there is someone in the ad who is smart and can correct him--anybody have any idea who that person might be?
To watch the video click here or watch below.
To learn more about negative depictions of men and fathers in advertising, see our Campaign Against Anti-Male Advertising.
Thanks to www.fathersandhusbands.org
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April 26th, 2007 at 3:10 am
This ad may well be considered unacceptale, not because he's a man, but because he's black. Here in the UK you periodically an official report on how Afro-Carribean boys are falling behind, which, at least implicitly, puts all the blame on race. In fact it is a mixture of gender and race.
April 26th, 2007 at 4:05 am
Also, coming only days after Arnold won the Volvo contract, this doesn't augur well.
April 26th, 2007 at 7:43 am
Is there anyone at Fidelity we can contact to let them know exactly how we feel? These ads are painful.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
You can contact Claire Huang to express your concerns about this ad. She's responsible for advertising at Fidelity. As always, be polite and to the point. Also, be aware that she is a woman with very strong moral convictions who in the past has applied her deeply held respect for the dignity of the human person to her advertising material. It appears she has a serious blind spot when it comes to ads that denigrate husbands, fathers and men. Claire Huang may be reached at 617 563-7000 (between 9 and 5 eastern time). Leave a message if she's not available. Consider treating this as a situation where a good person is making a harmful mistake.
Fidelity corporate communications has repeatedly denied that men are portrayed negitively in any way in any of their advertising. They may be reached at 617 563-0157.
Here's a summary of Fidelity's recent advertising material, much of which is available at www.fathersandhusbands.org :
Parking: Negative Portrayal of Husband (woman disgusted with man)
Ping Pong: Negative Portrayal of Father (female child dismayed by father's obnoxious behavior)
Pool Party: Negative Portrayal of Father and Husband (mother and daughter ashamed of husband and father)
Stairs: Negative Portrayal of Man
Kids Toy: Negative Portrayal of Man (women and female child disgusted with man)
Powerful Tools: Negative Portrayal of Man
Rick: Neutral Portrayal of Man (almost never shown)
Rollover: Negative Portrayal of Man (wife insulting husband)
Carol: Glowingly Positive Portrayal of Successful Woman (Carol was almost Sainted)
Some important facts:
-The absence of competent and involved fathers is so strongly correlated with crime that adjusting for family configuration eliminates the relationship between race and crime and the relationship between low income and crime.
- America leads the world in fatherless families.
- American boys and young men have fallen far behind girls and young women, at great cost to our society.
http://www.fathersandhusbands.org/img_vid/US%20Degrees%20Granted%20by%20Gender%20and%20Year.pdf
http://www.fathersandhusbands.org/img_vid/US%20Economic%20Impact%20of%20Shortfall%20in%20Degrees%20to%20Men.pdf
- A recent survey conducted by FathersAndHusbands.org shows that men in prime time television are viewed far more often than women as sources of marital discontent, as inadequate parents, and as "corrupt" and "stupid". Respondents to the February 2007 survey indicated by a factor of over 11 to 1 that wives are portrayed more often than husbands as "justifiably dissatisfied with" their spouses and by 17 to 1 that men are more often portrayed as "corrupt". Women were significantly more likely to be seen as intelligent (5 to 4), good looking (7 to 1), and inspiring (5 to 1). In two categories women received all the favorable responses as not a single respondent indicated that men are more often depicted as "good parents" or as "honest".
- In general, men are 8 to 12 times more likely than women to be portrayed as objects of contempt in advertising.
April 26th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
One presumes that Fidelity is trying to market to women with this man-dissing ad?
Why not show a man embracing his wife with love and admiration for her very with-it handling of
finances?
Why does the man need to be the idiot?
Why? Because Arnold is not very creative.
Because its easier to formulate an ad which elevates one person when you are doing it
at another person's expense.
It takes real creative ability to make a fun and funny ad without making fun out of some
fall-guy.
Clearly Arnold is lacking in that ability.
My answer: Don't Roll Over at Fidelity -- ROLL AWAY.
Move your brokerage accounts, move your IRA Move AWAY FROM FIDELITY.
Can any of you guys come up with links needed for
1. brokerage account tranfsers OUT of Fidelity,
and
2. IRA/401k transfers OUT of Fidelity?
Glenn, how about putting these links in your newsletter?
The Boston family who own Fidelit y are good people (Johnsons), and they do believe in
delegating authority to their executives. But they will intervene in matters of propriety.
My guess is that the Johnsons will shut down these ads faster than you can say Red Sox.
Meanwhile, we should all vote with our money.
April 26th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
There is very little that Fidelity offers than can't be found with other mutual fund brokers.
Vanguard literally wrote the book on index funds. If you have little time for investing, no one will ever have cause to complain if all you do is put your investment money into the Vanguard 500 index fund. Fidelity has a Fortune 500 index fund. They, like everyone, copied Vanguard to do so.
There are LOTS of choices in the mutual fund business.
April 26th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
I know this blog is actually about Fidelity and Arnold Worldwide, but Arnold Worldwide is also involved with the blogs about Volvo. Well, it took me long enough to realize it, but Volvo has a "parent" company, as so many other companies do these days. If you go to Ford.com you will find Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Jaguar, Land Rover, as well as Volvo. Ford is the parent company for all of these. So, for all of you who refuse to purchase a Volvo simply based on the ad company they hire (even though Volvo is the one who has final say-so on their ads and they say they will not do any man bashing), then you also need to boycott the others that fall under the parent company. How many of you own Fords? I won't even go into the rest since Ford is probably the most popular of the list. If you are going to boycott, then you need to do it across the board, other wise you are just another hypocrite.
April 26th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
GM bought Saab (a Swedish automaker) and destroyed the company by taking control. Ford was smarter and has allowed Volvo (also a Swedish automaker) to maintain their autonomy. The results have been much more favorable. Volvo is not using an agency owned by the holding company from which Ford selects its ad agencies.
Let's not forget that Arnold Worldwide and Fidelity are the real culprits here.
Arnold Worldwide was selected by Tim Ellis of Volvo. From a business perspective Volvo hasn't done anything wrong. Their advertising has always been respectable and it's likely to stay that way. We asked them to become activists for a good cause. We asked them to take the high road and change the world. They passed.
When you ask your neighbor to join a boycott and he declines, do you shun him?
Other companies will make their ad agancy selections with consideration to this important concern in the future, with and without the encouragement of our expanding efforts.
April 26th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
JeanB makes a good point, however in practice a market share wipeout for Volvo will get the management structure
who chose Arnold cut out (by their bosses at Ford).
It is not hypocritical to not punish other divisions of Ford for the poor judgement of Volvo management, HOWEVER,
JeanB does unveil an interesting idea for a great way to put pressure on Volvo to DROP Arnold.
And that is a campaign by men directed at Ford management over their Volvo division which has thumbed its nose at
the male constituency of America.
So here's the message: Volvo flipped the bird to American men -- perhaps realizing that they are selling what is largely perceived
as a "woman's" car -- but in the process, Volvo put the market share of it's massive parent company, Ford, at real risk. And
Ford is CERTAINLY a company which needs to keep in the good graces of American men.
Hey guys. Ford reached a 10-year low in its stock price withing the last year. Quite an achievement!
I say we help drive Ford's stock price down the toilet by not buying their cars. If you want to buy American, GM
is surely better these days anyway. So buy a Chevy Tahoe!
And as soon as you move your assets out of Fidelity, dump any Ford stock before it goes down due to the Ford boy-cott
(or should I say "Man-cott") by American men.
And then, maybe, just maybe, some executives at Volvo will get the call,
and then a man named "Fran" at Arnold will get the call,
and the "creative" (not) "talent" (not) at Arnold will finally get the message.
Maybe.
April 26th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Boycotts of Ford and Volvo based on Arnold's work for Fidelity will destroy the credibility of our efforts to end the male bashing trend in advertising. We asked for help from Volvo, a respectable marketer. Their unwillingness to support our efforts does not warrant a boycott.
Again, the focus needs to be on Arnold and Fidelity.
April 27th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
I only brought it up because so many others have said that Volvo should be boycotted. I do not think Volvo should be boycotted, not now anyway. Volvo put out a statement clearly stating that they have the final decision as to all their ads and if any of them can be offensive then they will not be selected.
I do agree that Arnold and Fidelity both need a message sent to them because of their history of man-bashing. In my opinion, Fidelity more-so. If the company that hires the ad agency would reject the bad ideas, then the ad agency would have no choice but to try another approach. This applies in all cases.
We, too, have a Ford, and in no way do we blame Ford for any of this. I was trying to point out that blaming Volvo for Arnold's Fidelity ads is just silly. Pointing them out to Volvo so that Volvo will no longer make the same mistake was a good thing. The F-150 ads (and all of Ford's trucks) have always been geared towards men, but let me tell you I do believe I enjoy driving ours more than my BF, and if you want to get technical it is HIS truck.
April 28th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
In my view, the issue with respect to Ford and Volvo is not blame, because they have not, with respect to any ads discussed here, done anything blameworthy in terms of the values supported by this web site. What they have done is help to keep Arnold alive, when some take the view that Arnold should have been taken off life support so to speak, due to being morally brain-dead when it comes to fathers.
The practical issue is that Arnold needs to be repeatedly sanctioned. The way to sanction Arnold is for it to lose clients (which is seems to do well enough on its own, but everybody -- even Arnold -- could use a little help in life). Losing enough clients ultimately means going out of business. Of course many of the dad-trashers at Arnold might get jobs at other agencies, but one hopes that they would have understood the lesson learned and stopped the dad-trashing in their next job. Having Arnold go out of business also has the extremely valuable impact of messaging all other ad agencies in the world that they should not tread on the dad-bashing ground ever again.
And by the way, it should not be lost on anyone here, that if dads can unite and drive a sizeable ad agency into bankruptcy, this puts a clear message in neon lights to every alert politician in America: Dads could unite and do it to you too, Mr. Politician.
And THAT, in my view, will mean the crossing of a very important threshold by fathers in America.
Now back to Ford and Volvo. Right now, Volvo is helping keep the errant Arnold firm in business. The goal of the letters campaign of this site was to ask Volvo to not help keep Arnold in business.
The Volvo executives who decided to help Arnold are themselves "in-business" (i.e., have jobs) at the pleasure of Ford management.
Thus there is no contradiction here in asking Ford to message those running its Volvo brand that keeping dad-trashing Ad firms in business is going to cost Ford and Volvo a loss of real revenues and real profits, as well as loss of reputation.
Therefore, a messaging campaign and boycott of Ford is no different, and every bit as appropriate, as a similar campaign to Volvo.
The message: Don't feed or harbor anti-dad terrorist ad firms, and if you do so, you do so at your economic peril.
Buy a Chevy and Save a Family.
or
Buy a Ford and feed the Trolls.
It's your decision. But if Ford does the right thing and causes their Volvo brand to drop the dad-bashers, then I say, reward Ford
with you next car purchase. Hope Ford moves in time for their sake.
April 29th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Let's say Arnold currently has 10 clients and is competing for the business of four others, and they continue to create male bashing ads for several of their clients. Which do you see as more effective?
1. Asking Arnold's current clients to move their accounts from Arnold and asking their prospective clients to opt against Arnold because they appreciate the problem with Arnold's approach
OR
2. Telling Arnold's current and prospective clients that we'll boycott them if they work with Arnold
Play this out in the conference room of the client when their CMO is discussing this matter with the other officers of the company. Play this out in the CMO's office when he or she is deciding whether the matter should be brought to the attention of the company's leadership. Play it out on the blog pages and web sites when we're trying to get 50,000 people to call and write to make their positions known.
I think we can be much more effective by persuasively inviting major marketers to join our cause than we can be by disrupting their businesses if they don't. I've been doing this for four years. There are a lot of people in high level positions at major companies that share our concerns and only need a reason to take responsible action. Our goal is a transformation of ethical norms in advertising. This transformation will take place when major marketers start embracing and acting upon a new standard and when ad agencies realize that the social toxicity in their material works against them financially.
Arnold will be affected much more by the sense that their clients’ own convictions are an obstacle to Arnold's success than they will by weighing the impact of consumer boycotts of their clients.
Not that it matters much, but frankly, the men's movement isn't yet big enough to produce effective consumer boycotts when the boycotted company is fundamentally opposed to our cause. (A serious automotive boycott might cost an automaker 0.1% to 0.3% of their revenue.) As I said before, the focus needs to be on Arnold and Fidelity in this case. The question is "What can we focus on them?" The answer is "the spoken or unspoken convictions of the people who decide where the big money goes".
So, tell me. Why is this issue so important?
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:58 am
Here they go again...
Like I said when I posted on the other blog, Arnold will only respond when their clients stop using them. Their clients will stop using them when they are hit in the pocketbook. Lets send a financial message to Volvo and Fidelity. I for one just tried to get through to Claire Huang at Fidelity and was stopped dead by a gatekeeper. As such, I plan to call my benefits administrator and transfer funds out of all my Fidelity accounts. I gave them a chance to respond and they didn't take it, now they can live without my business. Lastly, the next time I'm called by a Fidelity sales person I will state unequivocally why I refuse to do business with them.
October 26th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
[...] watch some videos of "dad as idiot" TV commercials, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or [...]
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