Advertisements can be funny, intriguing, but also completely misplaced at times. Like it happened with this Kerala hospital which put up a board of Oscar winning Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman to advertise its skin treatments.
The Vadakara cooperative hospital has issued an apology for the now-removed photo of the African-American actor used to advertise services such as removal of skin tags, warts, milia, among other things.
The advert soon began to circulate on social media and invited severe criticism for its alleged racist tone. There has been substantial outrage on Twitter which led the hospital to apologise for the incident, and pull down the advert.
Here’s how Twitter users reacted to the incident:
Meanwhile, as per The New Indian Express, T Sunil, the marketing manager of the hospital, claims that the advert was a result of ignorance and not racial bias.
The picture was taken from the internet and the board displayed near the casualty on January 26 (Wednesday). When we came to know about the gaffe, it was removed on Saturday. The hospital has issue an apology on its Facebook page. There was no intention to defame the great actor.
-T Sunil to TNIE
Clearly, in this case, ignorance was anything but a bliss.