The department store Globus is considered a trendsetter in the Swiss advertising industry. Early on, Globus attempted to implement novel advertising methods, creating an advertising department under the leadership of Ignatius Karl Schiele in the early 1930s. Schiele also invented the famous parrot character Globi in collaboration with the young illustrator Robert Lips. In 1933, he asked Lips to design something "novel" for an upcoming special sales week.

Lips created the "white N---" for the occasion: a clownish figure with black arms and legs, black curls, a white face, and the external characteristics that racial research at the time attributed to black people. This figure was displayed in numerous shop windows throughout German-speaking Switzerland, promoting the upcoming "Weisswarenwochen" (“White Goods Weeks”), during which white linen, white crockery, and white clothing were on special sale.

Contrary to Schiele's assertions, the figure drawn by Lips was anything but novel. It consisted of elements of a colonial culture with which the Swiss public was very familiar: Zurichers of the 1930s had the opportunity to "visit" black people in the "Senegalese village" at the Zurich Zoo, after all. (For more on so-called “Völkerschauen” see Plattenstrasse 10). The combination of black limbs and a white head also evoked memories of advertisements that had been popular in Western Europe since the 19^th century, where soaps and detergents were advertised with the help of black figures that were "washed white", much to the amusement of the (white) audience. This is also the case, for example, in a French advertisement for the stain remover ‘Eau de Javelle’. It shows a naked black child being scrubbed white by a young white woman with red cheeks. The accompanying text recommends the product for bleaching laundry.

The connection between being white and hygiene has a long tradition. In 1930s Switzerland, civilization, hygiene, and progress were equated with being white and contrasted with an allegedly primitive Africa. According to this idea, it was the "duty" of the white Swiss to act as role models for the supposedly "uncivilized" people of this world. The racist idea of how people are hierarchically arranged is thus also spread through advertising.

Old news? Hardly. More than eighty years later, Migros advertised the detergent TOTAL in 2014 with the slogan "Turn brown bears into polar bears again". The advertising photo shows the head of a brown bear sticking out of the water. Its body, which is under water, is covered by a white fur. A genuinely brown creature is to be turned into a white one. Again, whiteness is associated with cleanliness and brown color with dirtiness. In this way, the advertisement ties in with colonial ideas. The short commercial that accompanies the campaign further celebrates whiteness: it shows a blond, white woman in a white sweater washing a brown teddy bear with her little white son wearing a white shirt, in a white washing machine, in a white laundry room, with white curtains.

This example shows how colonial and racist ideas perpetuate over time and often without reflection. They are also, but not only, recognizable in advertisements.

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