DON' BYPASS AFRICAN AMERICANS! WHY! Part 1!
Thursday, January 28th 2010 @ 12:59 AM
Don't Bypass African-Americans
Marketers Make Mistake by Failing to Expressly Target Nearly $1 Trillion Market
By Marissa Miley
Published: February 02, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In 2008, the country's top marketers tapped Barack Obama as Marketer of the Year. Many of those same marketers also cut spending directed at the African-American market.
Najoh Tita-Reid
With advertisers chasing after niche markets such as mommy bloggers on tools such as Twitter, a "niche" worth $913 billion would seem the sort of market companies would be stumbling over each other to get to. Yet the African-American market has to continually make the case that it's a segment worth understanding, and one worth a dedicated portion of the ad budget.
African-Americans -- and the African-American market -- were surpassed in the past five years by the growing Hispanic sector, leading many marketers and the media to focus intently on the "next big thing" in the minority sector. According to Nielsen, total spending in Spanish-language media in the first three quarters of 2008 was $4.3 billion, up 2.7% from the year before. Total spending on African-American media in that time period was $1.8 billion, down 5.3% from the same period in 2007. (Procter & Gamble was the largest spender in both categories.)
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| BLACK HISTORY MONTH |
| First in a series | |
Still, the African-American segment has buying power of $913 billion, according to 2008 data from the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia. That's why African-American marketing experts are flummoxed that there is an implied question floating around the C-suites in the U.S.: Why bother targeting the demographic specifically?
Sales to be made
Putting aside high-minded issues such as diversity and multiculturalism, the simple answer is: to make money.
"It makes sense to address 40 million people who are African-American if you want to capture their consumer behavior," said Alfred Liggins, president-CEO of Radio One, pointing out that marketers frequently target niche consumer segments such as new moms, outdoor enthusiasts and foodies. "Why is it an issue when you say that black people are a niche?"
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The justifications marketers use are many, particularly in a recession: Targeting African-Americans costs too much; it takes dollars away from general marketing; it does not add value. On a recent industry panel, Steve Stoute, founder-CEO of consulting/branding firm Translation, suggested some brands do well with African-Americans precisely because they don't market to the segment and are therefore seen as aspirational. (Mr. Stoute declined to participate in this story.)
Another justification: "They speak English, don't they?" mocked Pepper Miller, president of Hunter-Miller Group, an African-American market research and consulting firm. She said marketers typically have this reaction because of the significant growth of the Latino market over the past couple of decades.
"That growth has become a catalyst for corporate America to embrace language as a cultural identifier, not race," she said. It's easier, she said, to make the case that a group speaking a different language deserves a unique type of marketing.
African-Americans, on the other hand, because they share a common language with white America, are assumed to share the same culture and same interests. Why bother with the research and expense when you can just recycle general-market advertising and maybe throw in a couple of black actors?
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