Interracial Advertising
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The increasing presence of interracial advertising should be obvious to anyone who has even a cursory awareness of pop culture. These ads feature all kinds of couple constellations, but there’s a noticeable emphasis on Black man/white woman pairings.
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Since advertising is kind of a science nowadays and nothing in an ad is without purpose anymore, it’s fun to think about why companies choose to go down that route and who they’re trying to sell to with that strategy.
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I’ve compiled a small international sampling of interracial ads to make my points here. Let’s start with a famous Swedish furniture store:
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This one says “Where life happens”. Our next example from a German insurance company expresses a similar message:
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“When life turns upside down, we’re by your side”, featuring a happily pregnant mixed-race couple looking at an ultrasound picture of their baby. And last but not least, the least subtle one of the bunch:
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These ads, despite being from very different industries, have a few things in common:
• We don’t really learn anything about the products themselves
• Even though it wouldn’t be strictly necessary, all featured couples appear in intimate poses
• The couples are attractive, but they’re not supermodels; the average person can relate to them
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Clearly these ads are selling a feeling rather than a product: “Your relationship choices are valid and beautiful--and by the way, our widgets could certainly enrich your life.” And who is the target audience here? Young women, young white women in particular.
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This becomes all the more juicy if you know, as marketing people probably do, that young women are outperforming young men in terms of education and career success, leave their parents’ homes earlier and more permanently and have more disposable income. They have the means to do whatever they want; all they need is social and cultural approval which hip companies are lining up to give to them.
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But social approval could come in so many forms and marketing specialists would not choose interracial relationships to express “you go, girl” sentiments unless there was solid evidence that this would sell. Which suggests that highly paid marketing researchers have figured out that young, independent white women are best reached if you celebrate their desire to date Black men.
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Nationalists sometimes call these campaigns “anti-white propaganda”. Unfortunately for them, interracial advertising only works because the desire to go Black already exists and wants to be validated. We can only hope these valiant corporate efforts will encourage many young women to finally live and do what they’ve been dreaming about for so long!
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❤
