- Originally published in the Financial Times on August 12, 2004
Copyright 2004 The Financial Times Limited
Way out of advertising ghetto: ETHNIC
MARKETING: Director Spike Lee tells Gary Silverman that
African-American buying potential is being undervalued - although not
at his agency:
By GARY SILVERMAN
Spike Lee likes television commercials. The director of such caustic
commentaries on US society as Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X is an ad
man himself - the chief executive and majority shareholder of Spike
DDB, an advertising agency unit of Omnicom, the world's largest
marketing services company.
But even Mr Lee has his limits. He cringed when Nike, the sportswear
maker, ran television ads this year that featured LeBron James, the US
teenage basketball sensation, displaying his ball-handling skills in an
African-American church packed with a swaying congregation of
basketball luminaries.
"That LeBron James ad where he comes in the church where negroes are
flying through the air doing somersaults (and) tomahawk dunks - to me
that was sacrilegious," observes Mr Lee, speaking at his company's
headquarters in Madison Avenue. "I defy anyone to tell me that they
will see a commercial that will take place in a synagogue selling any
kind of products, or a Catholic church. That was a complete mockery of
African-American faith and the black church."
Mr Lee's observations are particularly noteworthy because, as he puts
it, "I'm a Nike person." He directed and acted in a series of
groundbreaking ads with Michael Jordan, the basketball star, that
helped establish Nike's Air Jordan trainers as the epitome of street
fashion in the 1980s. He is also a fan of Mr James, since his ad agency
cast him in one of its advertisements. But Mr Lee is a social critic,
too, and his reaction to the Nike church ad provides a glimpse into the
sensitivities involved in the growing business of US ethnic marketing.
Advertisers have been focusing on African-Americans, Hispanics and
other US minority groups because of new data demonstrating their buying
power.
African-Americans in the US, if considered as a separate country, would
rank 11th by gross national product, according to UniWorld, an ad
agency associate of WPP, the UK marketing services company. More than a
quarter of African-Americans earn more than Dollars 50,000 (Pounds
29,800) a year.
At the same time, advertisers have seen an opportunity to reach a new
group of consumers that they call "urban" - people of various races who
respond to trends emanating from cities. This audience would include
everyone from urban professionals accustomed to living in interracial
areas to the legions of white suburbanites who have become devotees of
rap music - a group so large that it has invited parody in the form of
Ali G, the comic creation of the UK's Sacha Baron Cohen now known to
television audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Dana Wade, Spike
DDB president, estimates that about three-quarters of its business is
"urban", with the rest focused on African-American consumers.
Mr Lee says he formed his agency - which employs about 45 people - in
the late 1990s because he grew frustrated directing other people's
ideas. He owns a 51 per cent stake, with the rest held by DDB
Worldwide, one of Omnicom's ad agency networks. But even with majority
control, Mr Lee still faces obstacles in the form of corporate notions
of African-Americans.
Spike DDB's recent work includes a Pepsi-Cola ad that was based on the
opera Carmen - with the singer Beyonce Knowles in the starring role.
But Mr Lee and Ms Wade say many potential clients still want to portray
African-Americans - particularly young men - in less flattering ways.
Ms Wade says: "There is a certain kind of imagery using young African-
American men that Americans at large are willing to accept - and that's
gangster, over-the-top imagery." Mr Lee adds: "I hear from a lot of my
actor friends that when they go on an audition, they (white directors)
go: 'Can you be a little blacker? Can you be a little more street?'"
The result is that, as Mr Lee and Ms Wade see it, African-Americans
still exist in an advertising ghetto. Companies selling cars and
clothes, or food and drink, or financial services such as insurance,
clearly care about minority audiences. But marketers of luxury goods
steer clear.
"The more luxury-oriented the brand becomes, the more afraid the
marketing organisation is," Ms Wade says. "We are missing in the luxury
areas completely. They want to believe that all African-Americans are
poor and that we are all uneducated. Thank God for the census, in some
way, because people discovered that there was not only a middle class,
but an upper middle class in the African- American community."
Mr Lee says the popularity of African-American culture suggests that
African-Americans have a greater appeal than many advertisers assume.
In this sense, he leaves the impression that he would like his
advertising agency to take on a more universal tone.
"We (African-Americans) are the ones generating everything as far as
fashion, music, language, whatever, goes - but then we are not thought
of as being universal and appealing to everybody. If we didn't appeal
to everybody, why would African-American culture be siphoned off or
appropriated?" he says.
"What makes us distinct at Spike DDB is that we think we can market to
anybody. We have never, ever, ever, had the mindset as
African-Americans that what we do and who we are and what we project is
limited and not universal."
But for all his universalist ambitions, Mr Lee remains a defender of
the faith in a sense - an African-American keen to protect his culture
against those who would exploit it or reduce it to minstrelsy. This is
hardly a new threat in US society, but Mr Lee remains a keen
preservationist.
"African-American culture has always been appropriated. Look at Aunt
Jemima. Look at Uncle Ben," Mr Lee says. "One of the - you might say -
hustles is how to be black without being black. A lot of people who
mastered that made a whole lot of money. You go down the line: Elvis,
Eminem, the Beatles when they started out, the Rolling Stones, Al
Jolson."
Ms Wade says in some cases the agency has broken off relations with
clients that stepped over the line into exploitation. She declines to
name the companies, explaining that Spike DDB wants to handle such
situations "politely".
"When you know you are getting robbed and you know what they want to do
is co-opt African-American culture and turn it into something that they
believe is African-American culture, you have to move on," she says.
"The good guys are coming because they want to understand the consumer
and they don't want to make mistakes. When they come here, with Spike
as our leader, they come with an understanding, for the most part, that
whatever we do will be respectful of the consumer. There is stuff we
are just not going to do."
Mr Lee waited until the end of the interview to mention that he has a
film coming out - She Hate Me - and only then to link its theme to his
Spike DDB work. Even in advertising, Mr Lee says his ambition is to
teach people how to do the right thing.
"A lot of what Dana and I have to do is educate our clients, who just
don't know. They have a monolithic view of African-Americans: that we
all look alike, talk alike, come from the same social and economic
background.
"If there's racism in the world, in America, it's going to be in the
educational system, it's going to be in movies, it's going to be in
advertising."