Paul Smalera: A history of African-American-Targeted Advertising
[Paul Smalera has written for Condé Nast Portfolio, The New York Times and The New York Observer among others. He blogs at true/slant.]
In "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man," Henry Louis Gates writes, that many black Americans think that "the soft drink Tropical Fantasy is manufactured by the Ku Klux Klan and contains a special ingredient designed to sterilize black men." He then demolishes this and other conspiracy theories while recalling America's troubled racial history, and its hope of overcoming it. When his arrest and reconciliation rekindled that history, we thought of these 1970s ads, however contemporaneously clumsy, which represented corporate America's first broad attempts at dialogue with Afro-America.
The driver in this 1975 McDonald's (MCD) ad is clearly "on the job." The truck, the spare tire behind the men, the clipboard all scream it. This is "targeted" advertising: usually created by different departments or agencies together to appeal to ethnic groups. In a 1999 Brandweek article, an employee at one targeted agency tells of a supervisor who told him, "Your creative must be something that is ownable by us [African-Americans]. ... Otherwise, what's to stop the client from telling their general market agency. ‘Do the same spot, but do a version with an all-black cast and black music?' "...
Read entire article at http://www.thebigmoney.com (Click here to see slideshow.)
In "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man," Henry Louis Gates writes, that many black Americans think that "the soft drink Tropical Fantasy is manufactured by the Ku Klux Klan and contains a special ingredient designed to sterilize black men." He then demolishes this and other conspiracy theories while recalling America's troubled racial history, and its hope of overcoming it. When his arrest and reconciliation rekindled that history, we thought of these 1970s ads, however contemporaneously clumsy, which represented corporate America's first broad attempts at dialogue with Afro-America.
The driver in this 1975 McDonald's (MCD) ad is clearly "on the job." The truck, the spare tire behind the men, the clipboard all scream it. This is "targeted" advertising: usually created by different departments or agencies together to appeal to ethnic groups. In a 1999 Brandweek article, an employee at one targeted agency tells of a supervisor who told him, "Your creative must be something that is ownable by us [African-Americans]. ... Otherwise, what's to stop the client from telling their general market agency. ‘Do the same spot, but do a version with an all-black cast and black music?' "...