Monday, March 21, 2005

Essay Fourteen

Newsflash!

DiversityInc.com exposes Adweek and Advertising Age for the publications’ “dearth of diverse imagery.” The critical article details the abysmal lack of people with disabilities and people of color in both magazines. DiversityInc.com literally scoured through recent issues for photos of the disabled and minorities—and ultimately found few to none.

Lawd today! What a shocker!

DiversityInc.com declares Advertising Age and Adweek “don’t reflect reality.” In the publications’ defense, the content really does reflect the audience.

If you conducted the same experiment on magazines like Jet and Ebony, the results would be similar—albeit in the opposite direction.

So if publications are targeting an industry where minorities are barely visible, why should anyone be surprised over the DiversityInc.com report?

Don’t find fault with Adweek and Advertising Age.

The real problem lies with the Advertising Industry.



(View the full article at DiversityInc.com today!)

1 comment:

on a lark said...

In a recent article in Adweek, Perry Fair laments that "Traditionally, African American ads take a clichéd, lowbrow view of the audience". When was the last time this brother took time off from rock-climbing and paint-balling to actually do some ballin' with his target audience?

Children of the Revolution, in positons such as Fair and Christopher Davis (also quoted in the article) should be careful that they not be so wide and broad that they live, work, and play where upward mobility seems the only air pure enough to breathe.

My interests, and those of the black creatives I hang with, are just as esoteric as those of Fair and Davis. But we remain mindful that we are still apart of and market to, a community that may not have had the same access to those experiences.

If Fair went to True Agency, TBWA\C\D's multicultural shop, to be the "voice in the darkness" because "the African American audience is smarter than you think". he should realize that we're also smart enough to recognize self-hate when we see it.

And I still don't get those Nissan ads.