White privilege in marketing
Let’s add one more item to Peggy’s knapsack…
- I can watch a commercial for the iPhone and see a lot of white people.
Samuel L. Jackson is the only person of color in this commercial. Who is Apple’s target demographic for this product…?
Related posts:
wow. that was amazingly bad. even the cartoons were white. usually if they lack real people of color, they’ll at least make the cartoons nonwhite. sometimes i laugh at the current attempts to include “diversity” in advertising and media. not because i don’t want to see people of color, but because they often seem so forced or unnatural. like you know there was a “diversity committee” that insisted that they include all different types of people. maybe i’m just cynical, but often it seems that attempts at diversity or adding multi-culturalness to media is done out of obligation or because it is “pc,” not because white folks are jumping to give up their privilege… anyways, when i watched that commercial i thought- holy shit- where was the “diversity committee” on that one.
brazil
26 Feb 07 at 11:16 pm
Just like there were no black people on FRIENDS, I’d say they are the lucky ones for skipping out of this lame white game, wouldn’t you? I think a lot of black people are smart enough to stay away from white picket fence nerds, but whites are still blamed for it.
crallspace
28 Feb 07 at 10:10 pm
Where the hell is my comment?
crallspace
28 Feb 07 at 10:10 pm
sorry for the comment-moderation lag…
This part of your comment is confusing to me…
What do you mean by “whites are still blamed for it”?
Eric Stoller
1 Mar 07 at 12:28 pm
[...] I recently blogged about Apple’s “Hello” commercial for the iPhone. The ad featured 24 white men, 6 white women, and 1 African American man. [...]
Apple’s new iPhone commercial » Eric Stoller’s blog
1 Mar 07 at 7:27 pm
Crallspace,
an addendum to my previous comment…Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans were not even PRESENT in the commercial and yet Apple would have us believe that the ad is for “everyone.”
Eric Stoller
1 Mar 07 at 7:31 pm
What I meant was, blacks are smart enough to stay away from such nonsense, but as we look back on it all, we (not all us) still blame white people, as if WHITES chose to exclude them. I am giving the black folk credit for skipping out on being a part of this honkey nightmare.
crallspace
8 Mar 07 at 2:27 pm
Just want to say thanks for validating my reality. That was the first thing I noticed about that commercial…. ONE black person using the phone to say “hello.” If I had the time and finances, it would be great to find clips from movies and make a commercial that truly represents all the different kinds of people who might buy this product. I am going to try and figure out how to express my concern to apple. this is why my children find it irritating to watch tv with me. but they are listening. mich
Michele Cleaveland
11 Mar 07 at 7:51 pm
Hi Michele, Thanks for commenting. If only we had the time and money to make an independent version of the “Hello” commercial. I think it’s really cool that you’re “irritating” your kids. I bet they are learning a lot!
Eric Stoller
12 Mar 07 at 8:31 am
[...] and now, my inner monologue: I found your take on the IPod commercial interesting Thanks! Uh oh, this is another one of those lead off sentences that usually ends up saying that I’m betraying the hwg club., for the simple fact that I am doing research on the opposite. I’d love to see data on this one… Today’s commercials have a much greater share of Blacks compared to both their overall representation in our population and spending power. Right….so that greater share in commercials is like what, 1 percent? The majority of commercials feature white folks. On the other hand, Latinos and Asians are grossly underrepresented for the reason that they are on the sidelines of “black-white” issues; therefore, politically-correct marketing companies do not feel the need to include them for fear of being unsympathetic, although their collective population and spending-power is greater than blacks. or maybe it’s because white folks own the majority of the media outlets as well as the companies that produce commercials? and maybe it’s because most white folks have been socialized that race is only a black/white issue, thus furthering the marginalization of Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. By the way, when you say “politically-correct marketing companies, is that code for racist marketing companies? [...]
Inner monologuing with Adam » Eric Stoller’s blog
10 Apr 07 at 6:58 pm
Hi, Since your last comment was a year ago, I’m not sure you’re still monitoring this site, but I found the comments interesting. In the last year, my husband and I have noticed a very marked increase in “black dominance” being portrayed in a vast majority of commercials. We were beginning to wonder if all the ad agencies had been run by blacks. In a country so concerned about being pc and so worried about not being racist, I’d think someone would realize that this “role reversal” is just another way to fuel the racial hatred fires. How long do the companies/advertisers think it will take for mainstream white people to finally get angry at always being portrayed as the plumb dumb loser in each commercial. I’d much rather see either same race or multiple races, including our other members of this countries citizenship, such as the American Indian, Latinos, and Asians. They’re all living here too.
I just think it’s really sad that because the black community has cried the loudest, everything is done to pacifiy them at the expense of all the other members of this society.
Karen Richmond
22 Apr 08 at 8:55 am
karen,
i wish i knew what commercials you were talking about. one evening of watching tv and i can count the people of color seen in ads on my one brown hand.
ding
22 Jul 08 at 1:50 pm
“anyways, when i watched that commercial i thought- holy shit- where was the “diversity committee” on that one. “-brazil
often, i find myself questioning whether apple, inc. has ever had a diversity committee.
pt
13 May 09 at 2:32 am
Well I don’t think anybody should be saying anything until we see white people on BET and on apple bottom jean ads and what not. Apple is just targeting their audiences. Probably white males buy the largest percentage of iphones, so they feature more white males. It’s all about marketing strategies and how the ad is going to make them the most money, it has nothing to do with racism so why do people feel like they need to continue to make it that way? They feature black women on the apple bottom jean ads because that is their biggest consumer of that particular product. im sure a very small percentage of white females buy apple bottom jeans. and that is just the way it is. that is why they feature females on most baby product ads, doesn’t mean the dads are being discriminated against, but mothers probably do most of the baby shopping.
Katelyn
21 Feb 10 at 1:50 pm
That is simply because people are conditioned for years to see white folks on ads. And a few decades of experiment is hard to bring about any revolutionary chenges. I bet most non-white folks ever get a faintest idea that they were ill represented in the ad. More over the white folks and surprisingly enough even Non-white folks would discern the difference if at all the white folks are completely missing in the ad.
I bet this is a majority opinion (even though whites do not form majority world wide).
hitch
17 Apr 10 at 11:23 am