Popchips pulls "Raj the Bollywood producer" from world wide lovers campaign as it's seen as racist

Here's an update on those popchips ads we posted earlier this week. Gawker pondered if "racism sells?", since Asthon Kutcher put on a brownface when he played "Raj the Bollywood producer" in the popchips world wide lovers campaign. After Gawker wrote about it, so did Anil Dash and the ad has now been pulled off the intarwebs by the Popchips company. Quoting Gawker here who seem to have the same issue I have with these ads, they just plain ain't funny.

Following a thoughtful piece by Anil Dash criticizing Popchips usage of brownface in their latest ad campaign, the company's founder, Keith Belling, apologized "to anyone we offended," and promptly pulled the ad. Snippets of "Raj" still remain in this composite ad, but it too will likely be removed shortly and revised.

The ad campaign was created by Zambezi LA.

The ad isn't "banned" but posted under this top as we do with all pulled ads these dayssrc="adland.tv/opchips-ashton-kutcher-dating-video-freaks-2012">popchips ads we posted earlier this week. Gawker pondered if "racism sells?", since Asthon Kutcher put on a brownface when he played "Raj the Bollywood producer" in the popchips world wide lovers campaign. After Gawker wrote about it, so did Anil Dash and the ad has now been pulled off the intarwebs by the Popchips company. Quoting Gawker here who seem to have the same issue I have with these ads, they just plain ain't funny.

Following a thoughtful piece by Anil Dash criticizing Popchips usage of brownface in their latest ad campaign, the company's founder, Keith Belling, apologized "to anyone we offended," and promptly pulled the ad. Snippets of "Raj" still remain in this composite ad, but it too will likely be removed shortly and revised.

The ad campaign was created by Zambezi LA.

The ad isn't "banned" but posted under this top as we do with all pulled ads these days

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Kat Smith's picture

This segment makes me so uncomfortable. In case I needed another reason to dislike Ashton Kutcher. I think Americans and other westerners have a serious problem with recognizing racism when it concerns people of Asian and South East Asian descent. Hopefully people can learn from this.