POPCHIPS YANKS KUTCHER AD

Popchips has yanked an online ad featuring Ashton Kutcher dressed like a Bollywood actor in brown makeup after receiving complaints that the ad is racist. It received the back-of-the-hand from Anil Dash, a veteran technology consultant and blogger, who wrote that the ad “revealed a much larger, more complex problem with [Popchips] and with the ecosystem of people and companies that they partner with.” He demanded that the company post an explanation online “of how their process failed and resulted in this racist ad being created.” For its part, Popchips said that the ad “was created to provoke a few laughs and was never intended to stereotype or offend anyone.”