Confessions of a “Universal” Hustler, PT. TWO
Now, back to the lab…
We start batting around ways to seed this soft drink into the Black community. Giveaways. Churches. Community events. Eventually someone suggests celebrity endorser. (The client has deep pockets and if we offered the right one, they’d bite.) Names start flying: Jordan. Janet Jackson. Chris Tucker. Chris Rock. Tiger. Sir Charles… Quickly, some begin expressing concerns over “how black is too black” for this brand. After all, the core audience is white soft-drink consumers; we need to attract Blacks but not if it means alienating whites.
As the celebrity prospects are discussed, a mild off-color comment pops up. Then a couple light-hearted but derogatory jokes… Criticisms of various aspects of black culture that they “just don’t understand” follow… Next thing you know, a wholesale discussion breaks out over what “type” of Black person our client should be associated with. Many champion Will Smith. He’s “nice,” “articulate,” and not breaking the law “like the rest,” as they put it. Other counter that Will isn’t “real enough” and “too boring,” or something to that affect. He’s “too O.J.” for them—pre-Bronco chase, of course.
As an apparent wildcard, someone offers up Allen Iverson. Quickly the room agrees AI is “a little too much” for the client. (Remember this is 2000—Iverson was still too “street” for most of America; even some NBA execs thought so.) Someone else suggests trying a black endorser who isn’t an athlete or an actor “to avoid the obvious.” But after a minute or two of dead silence they realize they can’t think of anyone. In between lots of hand-wringing all decide that it might not be “interesting enough” and possibly a “disconnect” to show a black person “in that context.” So it’s back to athletes, entertainers, and who/what is “too black.”
By now I’m so frustrated that I storm out of the room. I don’t know what bothered me more—the discussion or the fact that I was in on it. I went back to my desk and began writing my resignation letter. While typing I realized that I still needed money, and this whole “blackness” thing was lucrative. So I stopped and hit one of our big comfy bathrooms, splashed some water on my face and sat in a stall to chill out.
About 20 minutes later I went back into the meeting. Judging from the reactions, I don’t think anyone noticed I was gone. In my absence five Black endorser options had been scrawled onto one of those gigantic Post-It pads. They were noted as “final selects.” I read the names… Will Smith was number one. The others left me shaking my head in masked disgust and counting the days until my next paycheck. (The client ended up going with a patchwork of messages until their L’il Penny rip-off took off.)
But that day got to me. There was something about being in a room full of whites with more power and influence than even they probably realized or would ever admit to having literally deciding what is too Black. They were actually imposing their values on Black culture and Black people, not just in the name of commerce, but also in the name of America. But what got to me even more was that I helped them do it.
Looking back, that soda meeting was typical and actually quite mild compared to the rest of my marketing experiences and those of most black marketing professionals. Overall, the schemes are usually way more manipulative and exploitive. The clients and coworkers are usually more callous, clueless, condescending, biased, indifferent, insert-descriptor-here…
The images we created were often destructively stereotypical and fetishizing, even when we were being subtle. The ideas and ideals we attached brands to were often marginalizing and dehumanizing. The brands we pushed were often as disposable and empty as our perceptions of our ethnic target audiences. The money we made seldom if ever saw the pockets of minority professionals or vendors. (Most of the companies involved had few if any minority professionals on staff and spent as little money as possible with black vendors and companies. Such is still the case today.)
Funny thing it never felt like some secret cabal or Illuminati-type stuff; it was just business as usual. And of course, it was ethical. Maybe that’s why we seldom if ever cared about the repercussions.
We start batting around ways to seed this soft drink into the Black community. Giveaways. Churches. Community events. Eventually someone suggests celebrity endorser. (The client has deep pockets and if we offered the right one, they’d bite.) Names start flying: Jordan. Janet Jackson. Chris Tucker. Chris Rock. Tiger. Sir Charles… Quickly, some begin expressing concerns over “how black is too black” for this brand. After all, the core audience is white soft-drink consumers; we need to attract Blacks but not if it means alienating whites.
As the celebrity prospects are discussed, a mild off-color comment pops up. Then a couple light-hearted but derogatory jokes… Criticisms of various aspects of black culture that they “just don’t understand” follow… Next thing you know, a wholesale discussion breaks out over what “type” of Black person our client should be associated with. Many champion Will Smith. He’s “nice,” “articulate,” and not breaking the law “like the rest,” as they put it. Other counter that Will isn’t “real enough” and “too boring,” or something to that affect. He’s “too O.J.” for them—pre-Bronco chase, of course.
As an apparent wildcard, someone offers up Allen Iverson. Quickly the room agrees AI is “a little too much” for the client. (Remember this is 2000—Iverson was still too “street” for most of America; even some NBA execs thought so.) Someone else suggests trying a black endorser who isn’t an athlete or an actor “to avoid the obvious.” But after a minute or two of dead silence they realize they can’t think of anyone. In between lots of hand-wringing all decide that it might not be “interesting enough” and possibly a “disconnect” to show a black person “in that context.” So it’s back to athletes, entertainers, and who/what is “too black.”
By now I’m so frustrated that I storm out of the room. I don’t know what bothered me more—the discussion or the fact that I was in on it. I went back to my desk and began writing my resignation letter. While typing I realized that I still needed money, and this whole “blackness” thing was lucrative. So I stopped and hit one of our big comfy bathrooms, splashed some water on my face and sat in a stall to chill out.
About 20 minutes later I went back into the meeting. Judging from the reactions, I don’t think anyone noticed I was gone. In my absence five Black endorser options had been scrawled onto one of those gigantic Post-It pads. They were noted as “final selects.” I read the names… Will Smith was number one. The others left me shaking my head in masked disgust and counting the days until my next paycheck. (The client ended up going with a patchwork of messages until their L’il Penny rip-off took off.)
But that day got to me. There was something about being in a room full of whites with more power and influence than even they probably realized or would ever admit to having literally deciding what is too Black. They were actually imposing their values on Black culture and Black people, not just in the name of commerce, but also in the name of America. But what got to me even more was that I helped them do it.
Looking back, that soda meeting was typical and actually quite mild compared to the rest of my marketing experiences and those of most black marketing professionals. Overall, the schemes are usually way more manipulative and exploitive. The clients and coworkers are usually more callous, clueless, condescending, biased, indifferent, insert-descriptor-here…
The images we created were often destructively stereotypical and fetishizing, even when we were being subtle. The ideas and ideals we attached brands to were often marginalizing and dehumanizing. The brands we pushed were often as disposable and empty as our perceptions of our ethnic target audiences. The money we made seldom if ever saw the pockets of minority professionals or vendors. (Most of the companies involved had few if any minority professionals on staff and spent as little money as possible with black vendors and companies. Such is still the case today.)
Funny thing it never felt like some secret cabal or Illuminati-type stuff; it was just business as usual. And of course, it was ethical. Maybe that’s why we seldom if ever cared about the repercussions.
