Dove is the latest company to raise people's ire with a tone-deaf ad

Talk about getting under people’s skin.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past week, you’ll know skin-care giant Dove sparked a firestorm with a Facebook ad that depicts a black woman transforming into a white woman after using its body wash.

Dove quickly pulled the offending video clip after outraged social media users branded it racist and said it reminded them of soap ads from the 19th or early 20th century that showed black people scrubbing their skin to become white.

In the three-second video, posted on Dove’s U.S. Facebook page late last week, a young black woman smiles as she peels off her dark brown shirt to reveal a white woman in a beige shirt, who then lifts her own top to reveal another woman.

Investors behaving badly

Finance professor Chi Liao’s background in mathematics often comes in handy in her line of work.

After all, both corporate and investment finance are built upon numbers. Yet financial reporting — balance sheets and cash-flow analysis — is not her area of interest.

In fact, her expertise has less to do with the numerical side of money and more to do with how our emotions affect how we manage our hard-earned cash.

“I’ve always been fascinated by people-watching and why it is we do what we do,” says Liao, who studied mathematics and finance before completing a PhD in behavioural finance from the University of Toronto in 2014.

Welcome debate over political ads in newspapers

It appears we’ve caused a bit of a stir today by selling advertising to the Liberal Party on the front of the Brandon Sun.

A full 4-page section purchased by the Liberals is wrapped around the Sun’s Friday edition in advance of the federal byelection in Brandon-Souris on Monday. The first thing readers see is Justin Trudeau’s smiling face.

I’ve seen the word “controversial” used in a number of tweets and blogs about the advertising. Some are a bit more graphic.