JORDAN PATTERSON
Staff Writer
Fredonia campus was left with unanswered questions after the recently released commercials that appeared on the university’s website seemingly vanished into thin air.
Last week, Fredonia unveiled four new advertisements that were available for viewing on the college’s homepage and YouTube. After only a few days of being up, they were taken down last Thursday afternoon when word started to spread that the ads were generating negative feedback.
This isn’t the first time Fredonia has tried to revamp its image with new commercials. Last year, an advertisement was made in-house that featured Fredonia students. The slogan was “Evolve, transform, change the world,” which focused primarily on the experience students will have while attending Fredonia.
This year, the recurring theme was that students will be prepared for the workforce because of what they learned at Fredonia and that they will always be a “Fredonian.”
While this year’s attempt did feature students, the production side of the ad was left to a professional agency from Buffalo called dPost. The commercials featured four lead roles within the four separate ads. Senior Benji Soto was featured in the business segment, as well as senior Phil Frankino featured in science, graduate student Emma Florian in education, and junior Ilana Lieberman in the arts piece.
The ads unintentionally sparked controversy when students began to notice that the voice-overs in each video did not feature the voices of the students being shown. The criticism ranged from Fredonia’s integrity to racial stereotypes.
Michael Barone, director of marketing and communications for Fredonia, defended the commercials, emphasizing the strategy behind it all.
“The concept for the campaign is to show recent Fredonia alumni as they prepare for their first big moment after graduation: their first day on the job. You see each of them getting ready, reflecting back on a Fredonia memory, and then starting their day,” said Barone in an email.
Initially, Barone expressed interest in using professional actors but was asked to find actual students to represent each major that was featured in the commercials.
Barone is aware that the majority of the negative feedback focused on the voice over during Soto’s business segment. The concept behind that segment was to reach out the vast Latino population in Western New York.
Barone responded to the criticism saying, “Benji’s appearance alone wouldn’t reveal his ethnicity. He could be Italian, Greek, etc. Thus, using a person with a slight Latino accent would help leave no doubt in the viewer’s mind and hopefully help us advance in the diversity goals which have been publicly stated by our campus for years.
“We made a point of sitting down with him — as we did with all four students — in advance to explain the voiceover strategy,” he continued. “We let him hear the voice actor and made sure that he was 100 percent comfortable with this direction. He assured us that he understood — and in fact, he shared our campus’ outreach goals.”
Not everyone knew the grand scheme or was a part of the planning, so individuals from the outside looking in saw it much differently. Communication professor Mike Igoe was concerned about Fredonia’s integrity.
“In this context, since they use voice actors that are not the actual students but paid performers, those commercials are definitely unethical. The Fredonia leaders who approved them know better … or they should. If our administrators don’t abide by ethical standards, how can we expect our students to embrace them?” Igoe said.
Business management major and focus of the commercial, Soto understood why some people may be upset but thought people were overreacting.
“I think it’s kind of unfair,” Soto said of the criticism. “I think people are overreacting. I think they did an amazing job … It’s kind of sad to see, after investing so much [time and] resources, especially now that they’re scarce … that’s kind of unfortunate.”
Soto seconded what Barone had to say in that there was a thought-out plan behind the commercials and the voiceovers.
“A minority relates to themselves, so that’s the same with an Asian with an Asian, a black with a black, but when you have a Spanish background, there’s a wide variety, it could come in all sorts of different colors, and I know that from my own personal experience [and] from my own culture, so one of the ways to help is to appeal to the audio learners out there who can actually hear, and when you hear it, then you’ll [say], ‘Okay, that is a Spanish person,’” said Soto.
Despite having good intentions, the videos were simultaneously removed as concern heightened around campus.
The decision was justified by Barone.
“A full week went by following the launch, and then something surprising happened,” he said. “We received a couple of concerns by internal campus community members, who knew Benji, that the voice we used sounded ‘too’ Hispanic … Given the tensions happening this week on some other campuses throughout the nation, our administration asked that we temporarily suspend the ads from the website until we could discuss it, to make sure nothing had been inadvertently done to offend anyone.”
Barone and Soto were unable to disclose the expenses, any compensation, or any fees that went along with this production, but Soto admitted, “We did get paid pretty well for that, especially for the amount of work that we put in.”
Whether or not the commercials crossed an ethical line is up for debate and speculation, but the conversation that students and faculty started forced the hand of the marketing and communication department to remove the videos and accommodate the concerns by changing the audio.
“So, we’re in the process of re-recording the audio for all four students, using their actual voices,” said Barone. “As soon as we wrap that work up next week, we’ll re-post the ads as they were,”