Producers of “Visibly fairer skin” Nivea succumb to social media pressure; pulls down billboard

Nivea

Finally, produces of Nivea seems to have succumbed to the pressure on social media as a photo posted by blogger Ameyaw Debrah indicates that the company is pulling their “Nivea Fairer skin” advert down.

Nivea came under serious attack from some section of social media who were of the view that their new billboard advertising their product had the inscription “for visibly fairer skin”.

Some celebrities, prominent of which is Ama K Abebrese chided the company for the wording of their advert. Other people also condemned the company and thought they should know better.

Nivea came out with a statement defending their advertisement.

Shame on you #Nivea. The nerve of you to be defiant instead of apologising for the offensive adverts says a lot about your brand values. Let’s face it, you would never dare erect this billboard or put on TV in the UK or the USA, but the fact that you have the audacity to put it up in Ghana screams volumes. Your team that made the decision to put these adverts out found it ok to green light this which is screams colorism and highlights lighter skin as the desire for African women, this is very problematic. Coming from a global company like yourself this is very disappointing. Month ago, Nivea apologised for an advert for their deodorant in the Middle East that stated ‘White is Purity’ after backlash. Let’s see how long it takes before you apologise and pull down the billboards and tv advert. Adverts like yours is part of the reason I started a campaign to encourage people to embrace their natural skintone. @nivea_uk #niveausa @nivea_fr @nivea_de #pullitdownnow #nonivea

A post shared by Ama K Abebrese👈 (@ama_k_abebrese) on Oct 19, 2017 at 4:41am PDT

But in a photo shared by Ameyaw Debrah on Facebook, the company seem to have succumbed to the pressure and is removing the advert from the public domain.