Red Flag for Red Shoes

Upcoming animated flick, Red Shoes and the 7 Dwarfs, sparked controversy this week with a questionable marketing campaign on display at the Cannes Film Festival. A large poster for the movie showed two versions of Snow White: a tall and slender one (the sort of princess we're use to seeing), alongside a short and heavyset one. The caption accompanying this comparison? "What if Snow White were no longer beautiful?"

Source: https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/red-shoes-and-the-seven-dwarf.jpg?w=748&h=545&crop=1

Unsurprisingly, the backlash came quick. On Twitter and in the news, critics bashed the marketing campaign for its body-shaming themes. The film's star, Chloe Grace Moretz, quickly responded with a tweet assuring fans she was just as "appalled and angry" by the marketing campaign by everyone else. She claimed the actual film has a message that is "powerful for young women."

But I was skeptical. If the film's poster focuses entirely on the protagonist's weight, isn't that likely the focus of the movie as well? So I watched the trailer. Contrary to what Moretz insisted, the preview only makes the film look worse. The trailer includes fat-shaming AND shows the dwarfs spying on Snow White while she undresses. It hardly seems like a movie for kids.

I guess we'll have to wait until the film's release to judge whether its themes are as inspirational as Moretz claims. But from a media marketing standpoint, this fiasco was mind-blowing to me. Media marketing is all about the optics. Every poster, tweet, television ad, Facebook post—every single piece of content—has to be crafted with the consumer's interpretation in mind. How are people going to respond to this? It is hard to imagine how this poster idea made it all the way through the process without someone realizing that this campaign would be offensive. And if the poster is a good indication of the film's content, I wonder if they might be doing some rewrites on that script.