After reading part one of Multicultural Intelligence by David R. Morse, I decided
to focus my paper on African Americans. In today’s society, it is more important than
ever to know how to target this ethnicity, and to know how to do it correctly. We are
currently experiencing a huge milestone in history, the first African American president,
Barack Obama. Some people still might be wrongfully stuck in the past, or might be
marketing to this group completely wrong due to stereotypes or lack of research, but
there is definitely a lot to learn about African Americans and their history and
information about them should absolutely be known before targeting them in campaigns.
Morse states in his book that, “so many of my generation grew up with the
certainty that we would never live to see a black president.” Since we are now
experiencing this, companies are finally realizing that it is important to make a
connection with them, and that it should be done in a specific way. As with other races,
ethnicities, and minorities, they are not the same as everyone else and should be marketed
to in a certain way. Morse explains how a majority of black and whites attend different
schools, worship at different churches, watch and play different sports, and consume
different media. You can’t expect to market to this whole general population, just
because they are English speaking. There is a variety of differences between these two
groups and this all needs to be taken into consideration when deciding how to market to
African Americans.
There is a vast history behind African Americans. African Americans
were the victims of slavery, and an unfair and unequal America for a very long time.
While there is no longer slavery, unfair and unequal may still stand true for many African
Americans in the United States today. Morse said that black and whites seemed to be
living on different planets. After reading the research presented, that did seem to be true.
Many white Americans seem to think that racism isn’t present anymore, and that too
much has been made of the problems facing African Americans. When African
Americans were asked about this, they were much more likely to describe racism and
discrimination in their everyday lives, and to say that they thought they were treated less
fairly than white Americans. Lots of factors, like median household income, economics,
health, education, and social justice prove that African Americans are significantly worse
off than white Americans. It is clear that African Americans are still experiencing
discrimination, with evidence like linguistic profiling, which shows that people are
treated differently just because of people’s perceptions of them over the phone or how
even names can be a source of discrimination. All of these factors contribute to African
Americans wanting race and racial disparity issues to be addressed, and this group wants
their history to be embraced and not ignored.
In regards to the media, African Americans have been portrayed in many
different ways throughout the years. In the 1800’s, African Americans were played by
white actors. Once motion pictures began, this trend continued. From here, African
Americans were depicted as many different stereotypes: lazy, harmless, servants, janitors,
and eventually regular working class people to name a few. At first, African Americans
were just excited to see themselves in the media, but now “African Americans are acutely
sensitive to how they are portrayed in the media, and given history, it’s not surprising.”
(Morse, 2009) Just seeing themselves in different media no longer is acceptable, they
really want to see who they are and not just the color of their skin on different mediums.
From research, it is shown that African Americans do not want to be
stereotyped, they want to be shown as “normal” (regular people with jobs and families
like the rest of America), and they want to be shown in all of their diversity. Morse’s
company conducted interviews with African American men. They want to be represented
in the media and advertisements, but only if they are respected and accurately
represented. They want their diversity to be shown, and don’t want stereotypes and
clichés to be what portrays who they are. They don’t want to just see themselves in the
media anymore, they want to be seen but also it be authentic to who they are and the
history they have endured. Showing their diversity is important to them, they aren’t just
one group of people made up of the same backgrounds and history.
In this chapter it states, “African American buying power is projected to reach $1
trillion by 2010.” (Morse, 2009) That number has probably been exceeded now that we
are in 2015. It is clear that African Americans want to be marketed to in the proper way,
and if they aren’t then there will be backlash. Marketers make the mistake of thinking
that their messages and products will reach this group just because they speak English ,
but they don’t realize that just because they reach them doesn’t mean that they will be
selling to them. Some factors that are important about the African American community
include: they spend a greater portion of their budget eating at home, they are trendsetters
and influencers, they devote more time to shopping, and they are more likely to depend
on ads to make purchasing decisions and to remember brand names of products used in
TV shows and movies. Marketers need to understand these different factors, and then
understand how to construct their messages appropriately. They could use these factors to
their advantage, but only if they understand how to construct an appropriate message and
who they are. If they don’t, it has been shown that racial stereotypes have impacted
African American buying behavior, and boycotting is the most popular strategy used to
show their dissatisfaction, which is more common than voicing their opinions. Since
African Americans have a large amount of buying power, marketers need to respect and
represent them more than ever, just like any other group of people.
The main point that people need to take away from this information is that
African Americans don’t want to be stereotyped, and they don’t want their history to be
ignored. Many still experience racism and discrimination, and it impacts their every day
lives and decisions as well as opinions. Marketers need to understand this when targeting
to this specific group, and not just clump them with the rest of the American public.
While we are experiencing the first black president, it is far from being the post racial age
as Morse describes. African Americans still experience a number of problems, and deal
with racism and discrimination. To market to this group you must have an understanding
of their history, who they are, what they don’t want to be depicted as, and build an
appropriate message/ campaign from there.
A successful campaign that targeted African Americans was the “Soul of Illinois.”
The Illinois Bureau of Tourism wanted to target the African American market to get them
to travel to Illinois. They hired Beaman Incorporate, and the ultimate goal was to increase
African American travel to the state. Over a three-year span Beaman Incorporated
launched a strategic marketing campaign. It was successful because it incorporated
Illinois tourism through the lens of an African-American perspective.
The company used an array of different strategies to successfully target the
African American public. Beaman Incorporated had a number of news stories and story
placements in local, regional and national media. They secured over 10 million media
impressions, had a web site created, hosted a “Heart of Illinois” trip, and covered
different places in Illinois as destinations. They also incorporated radio media tours on
popular African American radio regionally and nationally. They strategically used print,
online, radio and event marketing media to reach a large African American population
nationally. They also partnered with Southwest Airlines for complimentary airfare for all
attendees to events that they held, free fares on Amtrak to travel within the state, and
discounted ground transport fares and complimentary meals.
I think that print and ads were the most effective part of this campaign.
Advertisements and articles in travel magazines showed the African American history in
the state of Illinois. The advertisements showed the history of African Americans, and
options and activities that are available throughout the state. As learned about in
Multicultural Intelligence, African Americans are very specific about the way they are
advertised to, and communicated to. In the past, they were just happy to be included and
see themselves in media, but now they want to be accurately represented and want their
history portrayed. This campaign marketed to them by showing them that their history is
shown and not forgotten, and they are respected. Their history and heritage is shown as a
large part of Illinois, and as somewhere where the “energy and aura of African American
history is felt.” (http://soul.enjoyillinois.com)
The company followed the eight rules well. They did proper research about
African American history in Illinois to accurately honor and celebrate it, they saw that the
African American travel market is the fastest-growing travel market segment in the U.S.,
and they created a campaign that respected and acknowledge this group. The “Soul of
Illinois” website has quotes like “Learn about the stories that celebrate the heroism and
the innumerable contributions by African Americans. The soul of Illinois awaits you.”
Luckily, they didn’t have to use number eight which was “make up, don’t cover up” since
this campaign was a success. I wouldn’t have done anything different for this campaign.
The company did their research, and created something that was important to the African
American community. They achieved a large coverage of media, and in the end travel to
the state did increase which was their overall goal.
An ineffective campaign I found was by Nivea. Nivea was launching a new line
of male grooming products, and created advertisements to promote their product. One of
the advertisements had the slogan, “Re-civilize Yourself” and depicted a black man, with
a clean-shaven head, who had ripped off his scruffy head and was going to throw it
across a parking lot. Another advertisement that was released around the same time was
along the same lines, except portrayed a white man in a suit with the slogan “Sin City
isn’t an excuse to look like hell.” The company clearly did not target African Americans
effectively. The ad with the white man did not receive backlash, but for the African
American community, the first advertisement was racist and extremely inappropriate.
The company did not understand the audience as they should have. From doing
prior research into the audience, they would have understood that this was absolutely
unacceptable. The African American community is more sensitive about their portrayal in
the media than a lot of other groups because of their history, and Nivea should have
thought about that. This advertisement had the black man portrayed as “uncivilized”
which was not something they had the white man portrayed as. Also, African Americans
spent a long time feeling pressured into making their hair look more like white people’s.
(Sargent, 2012) Putting an ad out in today’s society that shows African American’s as
being uncivilized with their natural hair, and the way to fix it is by using product to make
it more like a white persons hair, is clearly ignoring the history behind this audience and
what is not acceptable for them.
Many of the eight rules were broken in this campaign. The proper research wasn’t
done beforehand to understand that this advertisement would cause a lot of controversy
and anger. African American’s did receive a “wink” in this advertisement, but not a
positive one. Yes they were being recognized, but in a stereotypical, inaccurate way that
compared them negatively to white people. The one rule that they did follow however,
was “make up, don’t cover up.” Once they realized the outrage and inappropriateness of
their advertisement, Nivea quickly pulled it and released an apology. “This ad was
inappropriate and offensive. It was never our intention to offend anyone, and for this we
are deeply sorry. This ad will never be used again. Diversity and equal opportunity are
crucial values of our company.” (Nivea, 2011) While it doesn’t take away from the
problems it caused, it was the right move to address and apologize for the mess that they
caused and the false representation of the African American community. If I had to do
this differently, I would have not run this advertisement/slogan with a black male. White
males probably wouldn’t have gotten angry at this since it doesn’t pertain to their history,
so they could’ve been in this advertisement/slogan. I would have chose a better slogan
and picture to depict this, and then checked with multiple sources who have better input
than I do to see if it is appropriate. Morse talked about a lot in the book how campaigns
and advertisements should be checked by the audience that it is being marketed to, and
people who understand completely. I agree, I think that running something like this
without asking experts as well as African Americans themselves is the wrong move.
African Americans are sensitive about their portrayal and this crossed a number of lines.
Looking at these two campaigns, it is obvious why the “Soul of Illinois”
campaign succeeded. Beaman Incorporated understood that they were marketing to a
specific group, and laid out the ground work for what it would take to be successful. They
took in to account the history of this group, how they want to be represented/depicted,
and turned it in to a campaign where both the African American community and Illinois
benefited. African Americans were finally seeing themselves respected and honored
through different media and events, and travel to this state was shown to go up by 1% in
the following 9 months. Nivea however, didn’t think about how African Americans
wanted to be represented. It seems as if they thought that they would just be happy with
seeing themselves in the media, or that maybe some still want hair like white individuals.
If the advertisement had been run with a while male instead, none of these problems
would have occurred because white people don’t have the same history as black people.
African Americans are highly sensitive to their role in the media, and Nivea didn’t take
any of this in to consideration. As Morse talked about in Multicultural Intelligence,
African Americans devote more time to shopping, are more likely to depend on ads while
purchasing products, and are more likely to boycott when a company is racist or offends
them. Nivea definitely made a large mistake, and should have followed the 8 rules of
Multicultural Marketing.
Works Cited:
Morse, David R. Multicultural Intelligence: Eight Make-or-break Rules for
Marketing to Race, Ethnicity, and Sexual Orientation. Ithaca, NY: Paramount
Market, 2009.
“Project Overview.” Illinois Bureau of Tourism. http://www.beamaninc.com/soulof-illinois.html.
“African American History & Heritage in Illinois.” http://soul.enjoyillinois.com.
2014.
“Three African American firms are honored by PRSA in 2007 Silver Anvil
Awards.” Target Market News. http://targetmarketnews.com/storyid06290702.htm
“Nivea Pulls Ad, Apologizes After Racism Accusations.” Wheaton, Ken.
http://adage.com/article/the-big-tent/nivea-pulls-ad-apologizes-racismaccusations/229368/