Ask just about any black advertising person. In fact, ask almost any black person and most will tell you they think the advertising industry is racist. They say many ads ignore black consumers unless targeted specifically at them and that the industry does not support black media platforms.
Themba Khumalo
Not surprising then that the SA's Advertising Research Foundation (Saarf's) decision to drop race as a market segmentation tool for its data collection has created some argument in the advertising industry.
Though some people welcomed the move, others are less pleased, accusing Saarf of engaging in politics instead of simply providing usable research, which should be their function.
"It's a double-edged sword," says Modise Makhene, MD of advertising agency Creativity. "Marketers have been asking for it (to be dropped) for some time. I'm not sure it should be dropped for research purposes. But if you use it the way it has often been used up to now, you end up stereotyping people."
Some clients are also unhappy with Saarf's decision, including black companies that insist they don't target particular race segments but target socio-economic clusters, and types of individuals. (See also Sailing away.)
Yet, though everyone insists that race should not be a factor in advertising, there are those who think research data on black consumers, specifically, is a good thing. The debate created by Saarf's decision is yet another indication of the soul-searching over race and racial classification in the advertising industry.
"The jury is out," Makhene insists. "We'd like to see a situation where wage and socio-economic parity are the only factors in media planning. But we're still a divided society."
It also, perhaps, raises awareness about the challenges of marketing in a developing country with a culturally fragmented society.
For a long time marketing and advertising in SA was simple. There was no fragmentation of media outlets and the audience categories were neat. If you were a media planner and you had a Mercedes-Benz ad you spent the majority of the campaign on what was then known as TV1. All your potential consumers (almost exclusively white) watched the channel. If you were, say, a creative for a top-of-the-range Jetta VR6 sedan, then you came up with a beautiful ad with a white man behind the wheel, darting easily between yellow cones in the rain, while whistling happily to the B J Thomas song Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head. Hopefully, you struck a chord even if your potential buyer wasn't a B J Thomas fan.
Then things became more complicated. Political change led to the deregulation of broadcast media and with it fragmentation of audiences, along both colour and certain class patterns. It has also led to changing socio-economic demographics.
A University of SA Bureau of Economic Research study, released last year, indicated that combined black buying power now accounts for more than half SA's buying power, eclipsing white buying power by a couple of percentage points. But though unemployment among black people is high, the number of middle-class black people, defined as those who earn more than R6 000/month, now outstrips that of white people who earn more than that sum. Of course, individual white buying power is still superior to black buying power; the buying power of the top 10 percentile of white income earners overwhelmingly exceeds that of the top black income earners.
The economic demographic of the country is shifting. What, if any, are the implications of this? Or more to the point, does colour matter when it comes to marketing? Despite some reservations about Saarf's data, many black industry players will tell you that race doesn't matter.
Brand managers, creatives and clients say they target types of consumers, lifestyle brands, and not race. The client is not interested in race, he is interested in the profile of an individual or groups of individuals. "The marketer wants to tap into what makes them tick. That's how he's going to make the sale, buy into their head space, their life philosophy and you'll close the deal," says a young copy- writer.
"We don't split our market into emerging or white markets," says Cell C's Themba Khumalo. "We're not just selling a phone, we're selling a lifestyle."
Makhene agrees, arguing that "when you're buying an upmarket product it doesn't matter what race you are. You're buying a lifestyle. So the client must sell a lifestyle."
"Vodacom sells products at a price point. MTN sells service. We sell a lifestyle. So our target is not race it is people who fit into our community's segments," says Khumalo.
An example of the Cell C approach is the club chat campaign. There's the ad of a young woman asleep and a voice-over that explains her busy life. Finally, she explains that she has breakfast at six. Then she gets up walks to the window and it turns dark. "Six in the evening," she explains.
Khumalo insists that an ad like that cuts across racial and cultural boundaries. He says the ad depicts a lifestyle choice, a lifestyle of hard partying that all young people can identify with.
But can a young girl in Soweto identify with a young white woman, waking up in her own flat with a view of the city, clad in nothing panties and a T-shirt.
"It isn't about the fact that she's standing next to a window with a view of the city. It is about the fact that she woke up late. Every young person who parties understands that," says Khumalo. "Communities of value that share a similar lifestyle that we can manipulate for our products. That's what it's about."
Yet for all the insistence that race doesn't matter, he is one of those people opposed to Saarf dropping race as a factor in collecting research data.
"Even when we are from the same class group, black people and white people live differently. I live in Northcliff and you can go into my house and you'll find the same stuff as you find in their homes. But I live a different type of lifestyle from my white neighbours."
Surely that's a case in point that our differences should mean race is a factor? No, says Makhene. "I think if you look at a lot of upmarket products, like when you sell a car then you're selling the same thing. A BMW appeals to both white and black consumers in the same way. If your brand is a lifestyle brand you can't market it on the basis of colour, you have to sell the lifestyle choice. Colour is one indicator of lifestyle but it is only one indicator.
"It is true that some lifestyle products - such as some cellular products, pay as you go for example, appeal more to different market segments," says Makhene.
The argument seems to be that while at a product level race should never be a factor, sometimes at an executionor tactical level, you may choose to target a race or cultural class. This, they argue, is not about product branding.
It does then lend support to their argument that race classification, from a research perspective, still has a role to play.
"Look at Vodacom," Makhene says. "The campaign has created a unifying product." He argues that campaign cuts across races and it sells Vodacom as a uniquely SA head space. He also thinks the Castrol ads did the same thing. They had a unifying factor.
He adds that these ads are rare. "It's a challenge to create something like that. We're still trying to find our feet. There's this whole rainbow nation thing but it's superficial. Until we have senior black creatives who are respected by their peers, you'll struggle to get ads that cut across. You need to change the industry. Not just at shareholding level. Creative directors need to respect black creatives and we need more black creative directors. We need that intersection at conception and execution levels," says Makhene.
"The challenge," says Khumalo, "is not so much marketing in a developing environment. The challenge is the mindset of the marketer. Where is the mind- frame of the marketer? It is mindsets that drive behaviour. We design products and services that target consumers on a wider basis than race. We create flexible products that target what we call communities of value. It is about doing things efficiently and effectively."
See also Sailing away
