Monday, August 28, 2006

Essay 988


The guy in this Visa layout is probably waiting for his next advertising gig. Don’t hold your breath, man.

----------------------------------------------------------

For the past few weeks, MultiCultClassics has been paging through general market magazines in search of advertising featuring Black characters. The list included Elle, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, People, Us, Reader’s Digest, TV Guide, Redbook, Woman’s Day, Parents, Esquire, GQ, Vanity Fair, Time, Newsweek, Business Week, Forbes and many more.

Excluded were layouts with Black sports figures, celebrities and super models. Additionally, ads depicting group photos including token Black figures were nixed. The goal was to determine the true diversity of the general market adscape.

After poring over scores of publications — and literally thousands of pages of ads and editorial — barely a dozen messages were uncovered.

This week, MultiCultClassics presents the rare findings.

1 comment:

  1. This is very interesting to me- last semester I completed a content analysis study of children's TV commercials and it was startling how few minorities were used as models or main characters.

    ReplyDelete