Heinz’s tone-deaf advert sends a damaging message about Black dads --[Reported by Umva mag]

It might be easy to overlook exactly what is wrong with the new Heinz advert that has been dotted around Tube stations in recent days. 

It’s a pretty joyous scene with a wedding party sitting together with bowls of Heinz-soaked spaghetti. The bride is about to take a bite off her fork as her new husband, his parents and her mother look on. 

Just to reiterate; both of the groom’s parents are there with the bride’s mother – no father is present on her side. 

In the real world, there could be a multitude of reasons why the bride’s father wouldn’t be present at her wedding such as death or illness. However, when you’re only able to convey a story in one picture as busy commuters pass by the walls of the London Underground, you only have one shot to convey the right message. 

From looking at the Heinz advert, you wouldn’t discern anything other than the bride’s dad being an absent father. 

And it’s heartbreaking that, in 2024, major brands are still perpetuating this harmful narrative, especially during Black History Month when we should celebrating Black excellence.

It’s one that has been unfairly bestowed upon the Black community for decades. 

Former Prime Minister David Cameron singled out ‘absent Black fathers’ who needed to ‘meet their responsibilities’ in 2018, while the following year, Tony Sewell said absent fathers ‘fuel’ gang violence. 

Yes, there are many families with fathers who have chosen not to play an active role in their child’s lives but that’s not exclusive to the Black community. The narrative that this Heinz advert so offensively suggests is that the white nuclear family is typically intact while the Black family is broken and it’s incredibly harmful. 

However, there is research that proves the absent Black dad is largely a stereotype and it also doesn’t take into account that an in the US, a 2013 CDC study found that Black fathers were more involved in their children’s lives compared to other racial groups. 

This advert is particularly triggering for me as a Black woman who hopes to marry one day but won’t be able to have my father present, not out of his choice, but because he sadly died before I was two years old. And before he died, he wasn’t an absent father but a devoted family man who had been married to my mum for several years. 

If a similar story was the intention behind the Heinz advert, it could have been done in a more meaningful and powerful way with more of a fleshed-out storyboard. Perhaps with a framed photo of her dad in the place where he should have been, to suggest loss.

Positioning the Black woman in the centre of the image might appear to be positive representation but then, her solo mum is sidelined at the end of the table and ultimately, it would have been less offensive if the groom only had his mother there too. 

Heinz has responded to the backlash with a statement which said: ‘We always appreciate members of the public’s perspective on our campaigns. We understand how this ad could have unintentionally perpetuated negative stereotypes. 

‘We extend our deepest apologies and will continue to listen, learn, and improve to avoid this happening again in the future.’

It’s the type of statement we’ve seen from other brands over the years but, does anything ever really change? 

Many of us would love to know specifically how the company will ‘continue to listen, learn and improve.’ It’s easy to put out apologetic statements but it raises the question of what work has been done since many of these issues were raised during the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, and what will be done in the future. 

How many people of colour were involved in the process of producing this advert and, if very few, what is being done to diversify the team? 

It’s been said time and again, but it is so important that brands incorporate diverse voices behind the scenes 

It’s disheartening that these conversations are still happening and that it has to take the public calling out a brand and essentially doing the work for them before they take positive representation into account. 

However, it is important to note that we have seen some change in the way Black people are depicted in the commercial space and there has apparently been an increase in the opportunities presented to them, seen in the amount of Black faces in British adverts compared to a few years ago. 

There is always work to do but we can only hope that the gap gets narrower.

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