Flashback Friday.
Non-white people are increasingly being featured in advertisements and a principled interest in “diversity” is not the only, or likely even the main motivation.
In this series, I share some ideas about why and how people of color are included in advertising aimed primarily at whites. This post is about the inclusion of people of color in ads to invoke the idea of “color,” “flavor,” or “personality.”
Consider, this ad for Absolute Vodka Peach (“Find Your Flavor”) includes two white and two brown people, plus a set of silhouettes.
Holly F. and Lafin T.J. sent in three Life cereal box covers. Notice that “regular” Life has white people on the cover, while cinnamon and maple and brown sugar flavors have people of color on their covers:
In this pro-diversity ad, spice is literally used to represent diversity (via MultiCultClassics). (Just a bit misguided too: Just a teaspoon or less of color, please.)
This ad for Samba Colore by Swatch also uses a model of color:
“Welcome to the Color Factory.” These two ads for a color photo printer and a color printer cartridge both use models of color alongside white models in order to express how “colorful” their product is.
Bri sent in these four images (three from Gap and one from United Colors of Benneton). Each Gap ad is advertising a different product, with an emphasis on how many colors they come in (bottom right corner). They all, also, feature models of color. Here’s just one of them:
And, of course, the United Colors of Benneton is famous for its use of models of color in its ads, blending quite purposefully the idea of clothing colors and skin colors:
Finally Joshua B. sent in this photo of two french fry holders, one with a black and one with a white woman, reading “never a dull moment, only tasty,” and “Is it wrong to think Arby’s all the time.” The black woman, then, is presented alongside the ideas of excitement and flavor:
There is also this Crystal Light ad campaign that compares water to a “pale” white woman and crystal light to a “pumped” black woman and these ads for an Australian bread company that use Blackness to argue that their bread is not bland.
This kind of advertising can easily be explained away as coincidence, but I think it’s a pattern. Feel free to send in examples and counter examples if you see them.
Next up: Including people of color so as to make the product seem “hip,” “cool,” or “modern.” Don’t miss the first in the series: Including people of color so as to associate the product with the racial stereotype.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 36
Tracy — May 24, 2008
In my entire life, I have only seen one tv commercial that had a hint of interracial in it. I think it was a computer commercial and it had a white father and his two black sons. There was no black wife present.
dreikin — May 24, 2008
I must be missing something - those two last ads don't seem to have any 'people of color' in them except what looks to be heavily diluted hispanic..It actually struck me that they seemed entirely white, despite a number of people being in the ad.
OP Minded — May 29, 2008
I agree with Dreikin, I too thought the "colorful" ad was surprisingly devoid of "color".
I also placed a follow-up comment on the previous post on this topic. A commenter wanted an explanation as to why I described Kool cigarettes as a "definately an African American brand". You should know that "Three out of four black Americans who smoke cigarettes smoke menthols, compared to only one out of four white Americans" and usually it will be a Kool or a Newport. Hence, it is kind of silly to object to the use of an African American in an ad that is directly targeted toward African Americans.
Jon — June 30, 2008
I remembered an ad you would've loved. It ran in my university student newspaper in either the late '70s or early '80s, for Southern Comfort. There was a young, attractive white couple who were wearing what looked like tropical-style tourist clothes, pictured with an old black man with a banjo. The caption was something like "Southern Comfort...As rich in heritage as a bluegrass banjo plucker." Unfortunately, I no longer have it.
The best part: it was printed on the same page as a very irate article about apartheid in Africa.
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[...] To associate the product with a racial stereotype. 2. To give a product “color” or “flavor.” 3. To invoke ideas of “hipness,” “modernity,” “progressive” [...]
Tony — March 15, 2009
It has always seemed painfully simple to me: if you advertise using white people, you're racist and exclusionary. If you advertise using people of another ethnicity, you're exploiting them. White people cannot win.
Laurakeet — April 10, 2009
Those Crystal Light TV ads from last year--not the newest ones with the Estelle song, though they are reminiscent--showed women of color shaking up the powdered mix in water bottles while the voice-over said something like "add some color to your water." Google isn't coughing up the ad for me. Anyone else remember this?
Laurakeet — April 10, 2009
Duh, I just realized I missed the comment at the end about a print version of that Crystal Light campaign! Wish I could find a video for the TV version.
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Jessica — July 11, 2010
Sometimes I think people look a little bit too much into this. I work at the Gap, I'm in charge of all the visuals and marketing for my store, and I can tell you that group of models were used for well over a year of campaigns, yes that spring one and the christmas one did happen to revolve around color, but they were also in denim on denim ads, white shirt ads, and black and white photography. So is a company supposed to use only white models when advertising colorful clothing so as to not offend anyone? That seems more offensive than trying to be inclusive.
http://www.nitrolicious.com/blog/2009/06/04/gap-spring-summer-2009-ad-campaign-more-pics/
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NBIrK1oBxAc/S4s0L9vYmfI/AAAAAAAAAM4/oDve4YRyqRw/s1600/Gap+Spring+2010+3.jpg
Just look at how offensive that is, I hate when they use people from a range of different backgrounds to evoke a sense of so many different shades of blue.
Same with the vodka ad, there are white people in that ad too, so wouldn't their skin color also be seen as flavorful? Maybe they used both skin tones to be inclusive, not even thinking of the flavor connotations. Yeah sads are obviously playing into stereotypes, the bottom two examples seem pretty egregious to me, but I also think sometimes people just are looking for things to pick apart and put ads in a place where they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
JerryB — September 30, 2010
More 'color for the sake of color':
Levi's -
http://www.wk.com/wke/show/we_are_all_workers
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=130827&nid=115850
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