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Chocolate — Food of the GodsLesson 12 of 16

Reading a Chocolate Ad

Goal: After this lesson you can analyze a chocolate advertisement, which has the widest gap between image and reality of any commodity in this series. Subject: English Language Arts | Run time: about 7 minutes

Quick recall

Last time we read two ways of seeing the bean. Two quick checks. One: what is the three-attempt creation structure in the Popol Vuh? Mud, then wood, then corn-and-cacao (Christenson, 2007). Two: what did Cortes call the drink? A drink more for pigs than for men (Cortes, 1520).

Why this matters

Take any chocolate ad you have ever seen. Golden wrapper, liquid chocolate pouring in slow motion, maybe a snow-dusted European village in the background. Now ask one question the ad never wants you to ask. Where are the people who grew it? The answer to that question is the whole lesson, because chocolate marketing hides more than any commodity we have studied.

The idea

You can read any chocolate ad with five questions. Run them in order. First, the visual language. Look at the golden wrappers, the flowing liquid, the European imagery. Ask what story those pictures tell, and who they leave out (Coe & Coe, 2013). Second, the absent populations. Behind that bar stand roughly 2 million West African farmers, and among them about 1.56 million child laborers in the cacao regions (NORC, 2020). The ad shows none of them. Their absence is not an accident. It is the point. Third, the geographic misdirection. The ad may say Belgian chocolate or Swiss chocolate, leaning on the idea that the finest chocolate is European. But Belgium and Switzerland grow zero cacao (Coe & Coe, 2013). Not a single tree. The bean came from West Africa or the Americas. The label moves your eye to Europe and away from the farm. Fourth, the word choice. Watch which of the three words the ad uses. Cacao sounds agricultural and indigenous. Cocoa sounds industrial. Chocolate sounds like a consumer treat (Coe & Coe, 2013). The word the marketer picks is a choice about what you should picture, the farm, the factory, or the indulgence. Fifth, put it together and name the gap. Of every commodity in this series, chocolate marketing has the widest gap between the reality of how it is produced and the story the advertising tells (Coe & Coe, 2013; NORC, 2020). Coffee ads stretch the truth. Tea ads stretch it. Chocolate ads stretch it furthest, because the distance between a golden European wrapper and a child working a cacao farm in Cote d'Ivoire is about as far as an image can travel from a fact.

Picture it

Picture the ad split down the middle. On one side, what the camera shows, the gold foil, the pouring chocolate, the tidy Swiss village that never grew a bean. On the other side, what the camera refuses to show, 2 million farmers and 1.56 million child laborers in West Africa (NORC, 2020). The ad is built so you only ever look at one half. Reading it means forcing yourself to see the other.

Remember this

The fact to carry out: read a chocolate ad with five questions, the visual language, the absent farmers and child laborers, the geographic misdirection of Belgian or Swiss chocolate when neither country grows cacao, the choice among cacao, cocoa, and chocolate, and the widest gap between production reality and advertising story of any commodity in this series (Coe & Coe, 2013; NORC, 2020). Once you can see what an ad leaves out, you can never unsee it.

Quick check

Quick check. Belgium and Switzerland are famous for chocolate. How much cacao do they grow? Zero, neither country grows any cacao (Coe & Coe, 2013).

Key Takeaways

  • Read a chocolate ad with five questions: visual language, absent populations, geographic misdirection, word choice, and the gap between image and reality (Coe & Coe, 2013).
  • Behind the bar stand roughly 2 million West African farmers and about 1.56 million child laborers, none of whom appear in the ad (NORC, 2020).
  • Belgian chocolate and Swiss chocolate are geographic misdirection, since Belgium and Switzerland grow zero cacao (Coe & Coe, 2013).
  • Chocolate marketing has the widest gap between production reality and advertising story of any commodity in this series (Coe & Coe, 2013; NORC, 2020).

Sources

  • Coe, S. D., & Coe, M. D. (2013). The true history of chocolate (3rd ed.). Thames and Hudson.
  • NORC at the University of Chicago. (2020). NORC final report: Assessing progress in reducing child labor in cocoa production in cocoa growing areas of Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana. https://www.norc.org
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