Mounting global outrage over brands pushing products promoting skin colour-based discrimination has pushed some of India’s biggest brands to hastily re-brand or take down these offerings.
On Thursday, the country’s largest consumer goods company HUL, announced that it would rebrand its Rs 2,000 crore fairness cream brand Fair & Lovely and stop using the word ‘Fair’ in the brand name.
HUL’s is just the latest in a series of rollbacks by some of India’s most popular brands—including matrimonial site Shaadi.com and Johnson & Johnson.
The latter—which sells Neutrogena Fine Fairness and Clear Fairness—had said last week that it would no longer sell certain products that are advertised as dark-spot reducers.
In the global market, oral care major Colgate has already said that it would review a top-selling Chinese brand called Darlie, whose name translates to 'black person toothpaste'.
Food and beverage major PepsiCo will rebrand its 130-year-old syrup called Aunt Jemima in the US market, while Nestlé, too, plans to rename a number of its international confectionery labels.
The global FMCG giant plans to go through its 25,000 products to eliminate marketing that contains racial stereotypes.
Closer to home, one of the country’s largest matrimonial sites—Shaadi.com—had taken down a skin colour filter which allowed its members to sort prospective alliances based on skin colour.
The site’s filter, the likes of which have been common in India’s colour-conscious wedding market in the past, had attracted global outrage after a petition was floated on Change.org by US-based Hetal Lakhani.
"We demand that Shaadi.com must permanently remove its skin colour filter to prevent users from selectively searching for matches based on their preferred skin colour," the petition had said.
However, a Shaadi.com spokesperson said that there was “no skin color filter on Shaadi.com, on any of its platforms” and that the object of the outrage was a “several-year-old product debris” left-over in one of its advanced search pages. This feature, it said, was “non-functional and barely used and hence it did not come to (its) attention.”
“When a user highlighted this, we were thankful and had the remnants removed immediately as it was a non-functional aspect of the product which very few users even stumbled across. Since there was no user impact and product debris is a fairly common occurrence in tech companies, we took it in our stride accordingly. We do not discriminate based on skin color and our member base is as diverse and pluralistic as the world today is," the spokesperson said.
Snowballing outrage
The moves come in the wake of mounting global outrage worldwide after an African-American US citizen George Floyd was killed by police officers while unarmed.
The death, the latest in a series, sparked off massive protests across both the US and the world against racial discrimination.
HUL’s move to drop the word ‘Fair’ from its popular product came after activists campaigning on Change.Org called for the company to drop the brand or its name.
Nida Hasan, Country Director, Change.org India, said, "It is hard to ignore the role of Fair and Lovely advertisements in shaping colourism in India.
"The decision by HUL is a much needed acknowledgment of India’s diversity. Just recently, Johnson & Johnson announced a similar move based on a citizen driven petition."
HUL, on its part, said on Thursday that it was committed to celebrating all skin types.
“We are making our skin care portfolio more inclusive and want to lead the celebration of a more diverse portrayal of beauty," said Sanjiv Mehta, chairman at HUL. The new name, however, is awaiting regulatory approvals, said the company, adding that packs with the revised name will be available in the market in the next few months.
“In 2019, we had removed the cameo with two faces and the shade guides from the packaging of Fair & Lovely and the brand communication progressed from fairness to glow which is a more inclusive measure of healthy skin,” Mehta added. In the future, HUL said it will continue to evolve its advertising, to feature women of different skin tones, representative of the variety of beauty across India.
Parent firm Unilever said the rest of its skin care portfolio will also reflect the new vision of beauty. “We recognize that the use of the words “fair,” “white” and “light” suggest a singular ideal of beauty that we don’t think is right, and we want to address this,” said Sunny Jain, president of Unilever’s beauty and personal care division.
Domestic competitors may tarry
In India, HUL dominates the fairness cream market, a high margin business. Analysts say the move is positive from an ‘Environmental Social Governance’ perspective.
“However, it remains to be seen if its domestic peers such as Emami (Fair and Handsome) and Dabur (Fem Fairness bleach), too, make a similar move or focus on higher margins in an already subdued market caused due to the pandemic,” Abneesh Roy, senior vice-president, institutional equities, Edelweiss Securities, said. Other brands operating in the segment include L’Oreal and Procter & Gamble Co.
Over the years, advertising regulator Advertising Standards Council of India has also been vocal about the need for change.
But most companies, while vocal about taking a ‘holistic approach to beauty products’, had been silent so far.
However, the gaining momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement, triggered by incidents of police brutality against African-American citizens in the US, has pushed companies to reassess their marketing for signs of discrimination.