BP Ad Poking Fun at Black Moms May Not Play Well Internationally

It's hard to imagine that BP's fortunes could take a turn for the worse following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but the company is courting controversy over its South African World Cup advertising, which features a series of local stereotypes, in teams, playing comically inept football matches against each other.

In one commercial, titled "Café owners vs. Mamas," a team of rotund, turban-wearing black women, one of whom carries the ball on her head like a pot, play a team of Greek diner owners with names like Stephanopoulos. Another café owner hits himself in the eye with his own medallion.

The ads were made for the South African market, and not intended for American eyes. That's no excuse, as everyone knows that with YouTube all ads are now broadcast everywhere. KFC learned this the hard way when it felt compelled to pull an ad it was running in Australia after Americans complained it relied on a stereotype about black people and fried chicken (even though that particular trope doesn't exist outside the U.S.).

If the same wobbly rules apply, BP will find itself trying to defend the use of a "mammy" stereotype in advertising not intended for U.S. consumption.

South Africans do have a robust culture of complaint about racism in consumer messages. The country's Advertising Standards Authority recently yanked this ad for Romans Pizza after someone complained that it "was an attack on white Afrikaans women" whom it depicted as "backward" and "obsessed with sex". There's also been some local discussion in the business press as to whether BP's ad crosses any politically incorrect lines, or whether people should just learn to laugh at themselves.

BP's intent with the ads -- aside from publicizing that it's the official fuel of the World Cup -- is to bring Africans together. Its tagline is: "Beyond 2010, there's a nation united." I'm not sure how portraying black mothers as overweight and shabbily dressed achieves that, but BP doesn't seem bothered: It touted the work in a press release after it won an award for ad agency Ogilvy Johannesburg.

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