Adweek published a provocative perspective from M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment Brand Strategy SVP Sabrina Lynch that will probably go way over the heads of the average White adperson and/or Caucasian client. Seems like Lynch used roughly 1,250 big words to say that Blacks are not a monolithic audience.
There is undoubtedly a companion PowerPoint deck ready to clobber clients, confusing them to the point of coughing up crumbs for a multicultural marketing tactic.
It’s challenging to convince clients to create more nuanced and mindful multicultural marketing when there is clear and consistent data that shows Blacks are not just underrepresented in advertising—they are underserved as an audience too. Plus, Black advertising agencies are underutilized and underpaid.
The issues listed directly above can be summarized in four words: Adland loves systemic racism.
The Duality of Black Life Matters
Marketers need to move beyond trauma bonding and contend with how Blackness is portrayed and defined
By Sabrina Lynch
Black History Month is rife with triggers for a Black person.
This may not be a surprising revelation. Every activity or message that recognizes the history of the African diaspora that built America is meticulously workshopped to maintain a balance that celebrates Black achievements—including historical contributions—alongside allyship over the atrocities still impacting Black communities. However, the mark frequently missed by the industry is an accurate depiction of the intersectionality of Black identity.
The default approach to marketing Blackness is seemingly reliant on symbolic and material representation, where a Black person’s body becomes a vessel for another person’s interpretation of Black folklore, language and movement. The portrayal of Blackness at a skin-deep level dismisses the cultural identities audiences hold dear, and Black representation becomes far more one-dimensional. It starts to mean something more when multiple layers of identity are applied.
Spotlighting the sense of connectedness that local, global and national communities feel due to what they experience because of their skin color is sound but does not tell the story of the diversity of these experiences from people with an array of backgrounds. More often than not, creative campaigns designed for mass American audiences—with Black people at the core—are built on trauma bonding, depicting the distress that comes with one’s ethnicity.
Since 2020, most U.S. advertisers have made an effort to be more precise in using Black representation to promote a product’s or business’ relevance in their lives. Whether it is being a resource or an ally, these strategies have primarily been pointed commentary on the daily challenges of being Black, such as racial injustice tackled by Nike in “Dream Crazy,” disparities in maternal and paternal parenting stress poignantly addressed in P&G’s “The Talk” or reluctant capital investment in female entrepreneurism highlighted by Mastercard’s “Shop, Share and Support Black Women-Owned Businesses” campaign. But there is existence outside of the trauma endured. They are fragments in an immense tapestry of life. For Black Americans, who have inherited and endured centuries of systemic racism, driving attachment through empathy will only carry a brand so far. It should go without saying that showing wokeness has a shelf life.
Intersectional storytelling
There are layers to the Black experience that are rarely portrayed, all of which are missed opportunities to recognize a larger community at hand. Notably absent are the nuanced and personal differences in cultural identity. Case in point: There are Americans who identify as African American, and there are first-generation Americans who refer to themselves as Black to recognize their lineage, whether Ghanaian, Guyanese or Grenadian. You also have those who sit at the intersection of country, race and nationality—born of the African diaspora, raised in a predominantly white country, now living in America.
Instead, tropes are created and perpetuated in advertising campaigns. All to answer one question asked with naive candor: “What kind of Black do we want to portray?” Maybe it’s the Metropolis Maven—a witty city dweller unmatched in ambition—or the Protective Parent, seething over the ban of AP African American Studies. Let’s not forget the Style Setter, who lives to bust jokes with friends on the block, or the Activist still reeling from the death of Tyre Nichols. Of course, there’s the Musichead, fluent in hip-hop slang.
While there’s nothing wrong with these particular personalities, they’re still a microscopic interpretation of the polylithic experience of being Black in America. It would be irresponsible to continue depicting the Black experience in such a narrow-minded way: There’s no exploration of duality, of embracing the joy and the pain of just being Black. A person of color can be the epitome of style, laugh with friends, have a visceral reaction to another racial atrocity and nod their head to the lyrics of “Mother I Sober” by Kendrick Lamar during a moment of quiet reflection. All on the same day. Sometimes the same hour. We must acknowledge the hybridity of lives led across the country far more than we currently do.
Advertising has a responsibility of care in Black storytelling, not only in positive representation but in building esteem, tempering social isolation and breaking the cycle of destructive patterns that portray Black as always synonymous with trauma and Afro-Americentrism—an approach that has historically hurt Black families and communities. Even when the flip side of trauma is given space to be conveyed in a campaign, it’s usually a lighthearted nod to cultural colloquialism, movement, music or fashion to provide an “insider” point-of-view of Black joy.
Now, arguably both approaches have the best intentions, but they are in danger of permitting the creation of outsider perspectives of very real human experiences. This also applies to Black creatives who may well be behind the design of an advertising campaign. Perspective can make or break resonance, drawing a gray line between cultural observation and preserving a stereotype of Black experience through expected social conventions. Just look to TikTok creator DameDamian, who has faced backlash over this approach.
That said, none of this critique means that the industry should hold back on how they evolve the way they represent people of color. The point is to do it better by understanding the different values and customs held by this audience. In a survey by the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing, 60% of consumers from diverse communities shared they felt “invisible or underrepresented” in ads, increasing from 58% in 2021. And with 46.8 million people in the U.S. identifying as Black, keeping up with how they self-identify is crucial—for example, while Black and African American may be used interchangeably, they are inherently different.
It begins with understanding how your advertising strategies have defined Blackness over the past three years. Merriam-Webster offers two interpretations:
a: the fact or state of belonging to a population group that has dark pigmentation of the skin : the fact or state of being Black
b: the social and cultural identity and experience of Black people : representations or expressions of this (as in art or literature)
So far, the go-to approach has been the former over the latter. Campaigns need to be more demonstrative of the microcosms of Black lives instead of being a singular, generic viewpoint based on age or U.S. geography. This is where thorough audience mapping will be your best friend, pinpointing the behavioral nuances that will inform scripts, casting and messaging. Going more in-depth with this exercise will give your creative the best possible chance to hit home for the intended target. When have we seen an acute observation of the differences between Caribbean American and American Caribbean households in the U.S., or the different bonds Afro-Latinos and Black Hispanics may have with their biracial families in navigating the duality of their cultural makeup? Touching upon the interrelation of ethnicity is not seen as a strategic imperative, unless the advertising is aimed directly at diasporic countries. But the diaspora is already here and well-established.
Let’s not forget the deal-breaker: defining the quality of Blackness’ role in storytelling. There runs the high risk that the narrative comes across as a representation exercise, where non-Black audiences walk away with a simplistic idea about the constitution of Black life. This is what leads to skepticism, an intuitive reflex in Black communities who could misinterpret your creative as an appropriation of struggle or joy for voyeurism. Nuanced identity is the future, and the future is now.
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