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Introduction
Good intentions are not always well-received. Unilever, a multinational consumer goods company, launched a brand social responsibility (BSR) program under its product brand Lifebuoy. However, this initiative faced opposition from several groups purporting to speak on behalf of the residents of the East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. This rejection is related to the advertising campaign with the theme ‘Help a Child Reach Five’ in East Nusa Tenggara. This campaign was launched, apart from marking ten years of the Lifebuoy Sharing Healthy program (Mahmudah, 2013), also to raise donations from the Indonesian people to help improve sanitation and clean water facilities in Bitobe village, East Nusa Tenggara (Ulin, 2013), as well as educating the local community about the importance of a healthy lifestyle to prevent diarrhea which often affects people in the village.
The TV advertising campaign was broadcast in two versions on national television broadcasts. The first version, 90-s, shows the contradictions of Bitobe (beautiful nature but barren with limited facilities; friendly people but poor and low awareness of healthy living), causing one in four children in East Nusa Tenggara to die from diarrhea. The second version, 30s, broadcasts an invitation to donate to help improve the lives of the people in Bitobe so that children can reach the age of and celebrate their fifth birthday.
This campaign was protested by various elements of society who claimed to represent East Nusa Tenggara. The campaign discourse that sparked protests and disapproval featured depictions of poverty and unhealthy living behavior, along with assertions that one in four children in East Nusa Tenggara succumbed to diarrhea, and an appeal from Lifebuoy to aid East Nusa Tenggara children celebrate their fifth birthday (Polce/GBA, 2013a). Despite Lifebuoy’s clarification that the poverty statistics are sourced from official data (Polce/GBA, 2013b), a significant amount of oppositional discourse disseminated through news, comments, and petitions on social media and online platforms still persists (Kaskus, 2013; Krado, 2013; Febrida and Gustiawati, 2013a; Wetangterah, 2013), ultimately compelling the company to cease airing the advertisement (Febrida and Gustiawati, 2013b).
This phenomenon raises several questions for further investigation through circulating texts:
Q1. Why are the representations and discourses of poverty in Lifebuoy’s brand social responsibility campaign rejected? What discursive formations make the representations in the campaign problematic?
Q2....