“I don’t feel it makes sense to curry favor to the vast minority and possibly antagonize the vast majority.”
Really. From a business/profit perspective, it’s stupid. Why “dis” those who potentially will spend the most money? If blacks are only about 12% of the population, why are black people and families in over 50% of commercials?
I’ve been noticing that so many TV ads are skewed in an attempt to be diverse. For example, there’s Liberty Insurance where a person stands in front of the Statue of Liberty giving a monologue. In one hour I saw four different Liberty commercials — black models in three, a white model in only one.
K-Mart “went ghetto” a couple years ago. Baby commercials are a mish-mosh of every color of skin except white. I’m totally OK with including minorities in ads; it would be nice, though, if they reflected the proportionality of the population. They’d make more money. Don’t they know that?
About six years ago I was eating at one of the fast food places inside a Walmart in California. The walls were covered in with very large and attractive pictures of people — ALL minorities. It dawned on me that there was not one photo of a Caucasion. Later that day I wrote to the manager and asked why there were no photos of people whose ancestors sacrificed so much to create a wonderful country for the others to enjoy. I actually received a prompt response and she apologized, said “I never noticed”, “You’re right”, “Thank you for bringing it to our attention”, etc. Two weeks later... ta da! ... some posters had been replaced and some models even had blonde hair and blue eyes. Of course, it wasn’t in proportion to the makeup of the population, but it was a small victory.
/End of rant/
Good for you!! I must point out though that when the commercials are minorities, that’s who they are marketing to. If they want more black customers, if they want a larger market share of black customers, they market the product using blacks.
I love marketing, but it’s crazy, I must admit.
“Later that day I wrote to the manager and asked why there were no photos of people whose ancestors sacrificed so much to create a wonderful country for the others to enjoy.”
How do you know all the people in those pictures were not American citizens and had no ancestors in America?