Is this another sad example of Total Toyota at work? It appears that the White advertising agency produces TV commercials showing Black characters meeting B.B. King, while the Black shop is relegated to creating a print ad showing a sistah rolling through the hood.
5 comments:
How is this a black ad? Yeah, it’s got some black faces hired for a few pennies to be in front of the camera. But that’s not where the money went.
No, the money went to hiring an expensive white Irish photographer. And a white stylist. And an almost all white team surrounding the photog.
Here’s an interview with the Irish photographer, in case any of your readers want to know what the industry is like at his level.
A level black photographers are never allowed to approach, because they’re locked out of white jobs at ad agencies. And they’re locked out of black jobs in favor of Irish artists, too.
Nah, black photographers and creatives can just be content using $200 stock photos for corporate Black History Month ads, and white teams can get the real money for Black History Month ads.
http://www.photovideoedu.com/Learn/Articles/interview-vincent-dixon.aspx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0KO15XW8dk
Maybe because it’s a black ad in name only? I’m seeing black models, but doesn’t look like anybody creatively in charge is black.
lockedout1969 and Anonymous,
Thanks for the comments and insight. IMHO, it’s a Black ad because it was created by a Black advertising agency, presumably for a Black audience. Whether or not many of the creatives and vendors appear to be predominately White is irrelevant (although perhaps disturbing and/or unfortunate). Really just wanted to point out that in the “Total Toyota” scenario, minorities are getting totally screwed; that is, they remain second-class citizens and probably receive even less work—while the White advertising agency winds up with even more work as they produce ads with minority talent (e.g., the B.B. King commercial). Oh, and the Black ad is a contrived piece of shit pushing clichés and stereotypes. Thanks again for the comments.
Something feels off the mark here. Yeah maybe the White people making the decisions were just not getting it and not conveying it in the final photo. I don’t feel like this is a bad concept, it just came out kind of pandering in the end.
I also think it’s unfair to judge Burrell for who they hire and use. They’re eating crumbs already, while the White agencies get the whole slice of advertiser pie, so it’s harsh faulting them for not sharing the little they got.
Nope; not harsh to criticize Burrell.
They've been doing a variation of that exact same Toyota work for over ten years now.
Burrell used to be an agency willing to walk the creative razor's edge in the past. You'll have to look back to a time before the google, but It once could hold its own doing good work on big brand accounts. Maybe not award-winners, but let that speak more to the racial prejudices of the industry, but certainly capable of producing avante-garde thinking and imagery well ahead of the mainstream curve. That all changed when Tom got close to retirement. He stopped trying, and it seems the new creative and account leadership has "sold out" as well.
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