New Trend in Advertising

by Sharon Cullars

There you are watching your favorite television show when it breaks for a commercial. You’re about to dash to the kitchen but something catches your eye and makes you do a doubletake. On the screen is a young Asian woman discussing how a detergent keeps her husband’s sweaters bright and fresh. Usually, this wouldn’t be enough to stop you in your tracks except for one fact – her husband is White. Now, interracial couples on television are nothing new. Several television shows have taken that step, although not consistently or very bravely. However, until recently, advertisers have been reluctant to use interracial pairings to push their products, especially if the pairings were in black and white. And yet, we can now see an African-American man dancing with a Latino woman in a car ad, and again, an African-American woman walking arm-in-arm with a young, White man in a Verizon wireless ad. In a print ad for Invisalign, we see a white male enraptured with a young, Black woman while a young white woman looks on resentfully. What’s going on here?

Well, maybe the movers and shakers on Madison Avenue have finally realized something – there’s a growing multiracial and multicultural audience out there and those demographics are due to increase, especially given the racial re-categorization of the 2000 Census. More people are proudly declaring themselves multiracial, and advertisers are realizing that here is yet another niche market to target. Niche ethnic marketing has grown in the last ten years, as everyone from J. C. Penney’s, Hallmark, and Honda have customized their ads and products to appeal to a more diverse audience, specifically the traditional minorities, Latinos and African-Americans. Yet, the majority of network marketing still represents a mainly white world, and will probably do so for another millenium or so. But, as the incomes of African-Americans and Hispanics grow, so will the attention of Madison Avenue on these groups.

As for these targeted audiences, in her book, Shopping for Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity, Marilyn Halter noted that the more upwardly mobile people are, the more strongly they identify with their racial or ethnic heritage. These groups get a certain gratification in seeing themselves reflected in ads that are marketing everday or commonplace goods.

Even given the growing ethnic marketing, interracial marketing is relatively new and a whole lot riskier. As common as interracial dating and interracial marriages are, they are still taboo and are not seen as the societal norms. And advertisers realize that. Seeing that African-American man dancing with the Latina may just turn a sister off from buying that Honda Civic she was considering. An Asian male might take offense at that detergent commercial featuring the Asian wife talking about her White husband’s clean sweaters. Lisa Ling from “The View” stated in interviews that she was roundly criticized by the Asian community for appearing in an Old Navy commercial with non-Asian male models. This criticism arose even though the commercial had no romantic overtones.

Given this negative sensitivity, many advertising agencies will remain wary of featuring interracial couples in advertisements. But as the multiracial population grows, and interracial pairings continue to become more common, the multiracial/interracial market will be a market too large for advertisers to ignore. For in the end, the only color that really matters to Madison Avenue is green.