Race in Corporate Advertising

Michael O’Malley’s article Specie and Species: Race and the Money Question in Nineteenth-Century America points out the connection between the languages of money and race.  He shows that the similarities in the two reflect how people seek to define themselves as intrinsically more valuable based on their ability to control entry to the market.

A recent Mad Men episode titled “The_Fog” dealt with similar themes about the issue of race in the economy.  In a 1963 board meeting the character Pete suggests that the execs from Admiral Television consider creating an integrated commercial because market data has shown an increase in sales amongst African American consumers.  One executive naively replies "Who's to say that Negroes aren't buying Admiral Televisions because they think white people want them?"  Pete is stunned.  Not because his character has been created as an advocate of equal rights, but because he loves money more than he hates black people.  He can’t imagine why a business man would let bigotry stand in the way of the bottom line.

But race matters in corporate advertising.  That was true in Mad Men’s 1960’s and in the much more recent past.  Growing up in the 1990’s it was a standard set up to have one black friend in all television commercials.  It was no longer politically correct to leave out African Americans, but corporations were still overtly saying that their ideal consumers were white people.  In this way African American consumers weren’t left out, but they also weren’t featured.  The commercials said “this product doesn’t neglect you, but it also isn’t for you.” 

I could remember several commercials like this off the top of my head: including a Sunny_D commercial and the Burger King Kids_Club ads.  When I looked up other commercials on YouTube I found an entire commercial break  snagged from a 1989 Super Mario Brothers Super Show episode that reinforced my memory of the “one black friend” phenomenon. Three of the five commercials feature kids. Two of these three commercials show only one African American child and a large group of white children.  The only commercial to feature more than one black person is the PSA warning kids against becoming drug dealers.  This commercial has an almost exclusively all black ensemble, with the exception of one white police officer. 

Are things different today? Companies are starting to change their approach when it comes to race in advertising.  There are two Target commercials on air presently which feature non-white families; one which shows an African American family and one which shows an Asian American family.  But what does this say about the modern corporation? Are we beyond thinking about race so that the commercial with the African American and Asian American families appeal to all?  I like to think so, but there is still the matter of interracial couples being left out of the advertising equation.  Perhaps this is a good question for O’Malley when he visits class on Thursday – how does race shape the present day economy? 

Comments

[Dianne Schmidley]

Leslie, I am not as "in touch" with advertising today as I once was, but I know that African-Americans have been an important marketing segment since at least the early 1980s when automated census data and large computers became widely available in the private sector. Only a foolish marketer would ignore customers, and presumeably, those that do are soon out of business.

Women have been important in marketing circles since before marketers discovered they were involved in most major household purchases.

One of the important discoveries every business person learns sooner or later is that age, income, and sex are the most important determinants of what folks will buy. Like it or not, income is a proxity for most market behavior.

These days, I see many advertisements for products used by older folks, probably because the baby boom has reached the "twilight" years.

[Dianne Schmidley]

Lindsay,
Sorry I called you Leslie. I know you are like me in that you do not use your first name.

[Adrienne]

Of course I have a story about Sunny D and P&G. I worked in the food and beverage division (I was on Folgers) and Sunny Delight was struggling in the category because consumers couldn't figure out if it was actually real orange juice (like Tropicana) or ore like an orange fruit drink (like Hi-C). For the record it is like a thick Hi-C - but given this confusion and the fact that it was much less expensive than Tropicana a Spanish language commercial targeting Hispanics was developed to intimate that Sunny D WAS just like Tropicana only cheaper.

I use this example in my marketing classes as the ethical challenges one faces. But one of the reasons I believe Proctor was willing to move forward was the fact that most Americans could not understand the commercials and thus would not be able to react and to inform the Hispanic population of the rouse. And by the way to add insult to injury, while shooting a Print ad something happened to the model so the agency called my friend who is a light skinned African American and worked on another brand at Procter to represent the young Hispanic mother - denoted by the darkening of her eyebrows, the application of bright red lipstick and the fluffing up her hair - instant Hispanic - see all minorities are interchangable :)!

[Salvatore DeGennaro]

This analysis of race in the commercials is very interesting and there is no doubt that commercials in the past were not so politically correct. However, I suppose we could make the same argument about age group, physical fitness level, and all kinds of comparisons. Are/were these companies strictly being racist in their commercials or are they simply aiming at their primary market? When we see commercials for sports drinks we usually see younger and physically fit people working out and drinking these beverages. Does that mean the company is discriminating against older or out of shape people? Actually, this raises another issue in these commercials: many of them offer an idealized picture that will appeal to the consumer of the product. So, maybe race would be an interesting study concerning that aspect of corporate marketing.