Non-Racisim in Advertising
I read an article on AdAge about the CEO of Black Enterprise magazine, Earl Graves, calling the ad industry racist for not targeting blacks. I was a little confused at first because I know that in my industry, OOH, we target the black community all the time. Black/Hispanic advertising is a large chunk of our business.
He speaks about how the media buying habits of blacks are different than everyone else. He illustrates it by saying how Seinfeld was the number one show in America for years and he’s never seen it. Moreover, he speaks about how the black community has proven their net worth, but people don’t want to pay for it. Mr. Graves make his case and point with, "More than 20% of consumers who have bought a Chrysler 300C are black,
yet far less than 20% of the vehicle’s ad budget is being spent to
target blacks directly."
I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Graves about the power of the dollar amongst blacks, but I don’t agree that the lack of ad-spending is racism. In my opinion, because targeting black Americans is different than the general public, different ways need to be used to market to them. The typical TV ad that gets the 35 year-old white professional is not likely to get the 35 year-old black professional. Targeting the black community typically involves using guerrilla marketing tactics and product placement. I hear/see it often from experts and friends that are black.
For instance, less than 20% of the ad budget may have been used to target blacks specifically, but how many times were they used in a hip-hop video or given to an NFL rookie for an endorsement. Things such as this are not figured into the mainstream medium equation. They only uses things such as TV, radio and print. In fact, I’d venture to wonder if on-line and OOH, the two biggest gainers in ad spending, are included as well. Mr. Graves even proves my point with the Seinfeld comment. If I asked most white Americans about Seinfeld, I’d probably get a mixed response to the likes and dislikes; however, if I asked black Americans, I would virtually get a response of all dislikes.
I hope they study this further and not cause a bunch of reactionary ‘diversity councils’ to tackle a problem that may not exist. This is too quick to play the ‘card.’
Hey, this was awesome. Man I appreciate this one. I see it on both sides. At my brother’s graduation in May. Mr. Graves was there.( with his Large Sideburns) I believe in 2 theories. (1) We do only see TV, print, and radio, when we talk about non-black media targeting. And the card does get played very quickly. We don’t really see the other avenues used to promote a product by a company. (2) America is separate. No matter how we look at it. Take a house where a black female lives with a white male. Majority of the commercial will focus on the “black” female. Not ’cause she is black, but because she is female. America targets female mostly anyway. But, let’s look at this in a different way. Take a TD water house commercial. Let’s look at the setting. 1. coffee house- a non black arena (typically).2.- Older white male spokesman( Jack McCoy from Law and Order).3.-Extra’s in the commercial- majority of them will be white, if not all. And then there’s lab tops around. The people looking very civilized. Now as a black man how do I take this. Do I say ,” Damn, do I need to be of that clothe to be able to invest?” I mean what do you think? You can’t think anything. Your not black. What we need to do is go to all the top ad firms collectively and state out situation. The situation goes like this: How do you market a product to the black community? Music, or with a hip hop or R&B artist. Now traditionally it works. How do you market a specific urban area? Flood it or “Guerilla marketing”. Both of these tactics are great, but they are flawed. The artist wins. His or Her music wins. We will tell the ad companies look, we will( with their money) go out to every state’s major and minor cities. We will take polls, we’ll take censuses of how, what , when , where, how often, what works, what doesn’t work, and come up with a true gauge of what black America needs and feels they need. We will be able to come back to the companies and show them that there is a great spectrum of views, opinions, and interest that blacks have other than the typical Ludacris commercial eating some lays potato chips. Great thought. That is counter productive. Again the artist wins. We will be able to show the ad companies that all blacks enjoy all the things that traditionally whites enjoy. From Jet skies, to Brawny paper towels, to sending packages thru DHL.
Let’ s Change the ad world. It’s like on the movie “Fight Club”. Those guys wanted to change world. Even if it got violent. Same as “12 monkeys”. We can not only create a larger dollar for companies, we can do some really character change in a community that really needs it. THE BLACK COMMUNITY. HOLLA.