Wow. Would you like whiter skin? Or at least, have the illusion of whiter skin... on your Facebook profile pic? Vaseline has introduced a skin-lightening Facebook application designed to allow users to lighten their skin color in their profile pictures: Vaseline Issues "Skin-Whitening" App for Facebook.
It looks like they're using the application, promising to "Transform Your Face On Facebook With Vaseline Men," to promote skin-lightening creams for men in India -- and they've got a Bollywood star as their spokesman:
The company has chosen Bollywood star Shahid Kapur to promote the application as well as its other skin-lightening creams for men. In the widget promising to "Transform Your Face On Facebook With Vaseline Men," Kapur's face is presented divided into dark and fair halves.It's a whiter, better, more handsome you! I am truly sad that we live in a world where a demand for such an application exists. Put it together with this photo "touch up" software and you can be your very own fake-ass Frankenstein's monster. More here: New Facebook app whitens men's profile pic.
"We started campaign advertising (for the application) from the second week of June and the response has been pretty phenomenal," Pankaj Parihar from global advertising firm Omnicom, which designed the campaign, said in an interview with the Australian web site Adelaide Now.
Skin-whitening creams for men and women have proved popular in India. Still, foreign companies have been criticized in the local media for playing up a perceived preference for lighter skin color.