Images of minorities in advertising

I have not seen many advertisements that I think portray minorities in a positive way. The only advertisement I saw that I felt called out to me was a large billboard in Alexanderplatz for the United Colors on Benetton. The rest of the advertisements with African or Black models seem stereotypical and borderline offensive. For example on the U bahn there was an advertisement with a dark skinned cartoon character, who had what looked like were African tattoo’s, huge lips, huge nose, and very closely resembling a monkey. Whatever the product was being advertised I would never buy, but then I thought maybe I am not in the target audience for that specific product.

After learning about marketing on a global, regional, and niche scale I can safely conclude there is no marketing targeted towards me in Berlin. I have seen people pf my color walking around this city, but I could probably count them on two hands. This is significant because in two weeks to see less than ten black people is a huge change from what I am used to. Suffice to say that the niche market (of black people) in Berlin is non-existent and because of this we are not marketed to.

Because the majority of Berlin’s population is fair skinned with blond hair it is most practical that ad campaigns are targeted to people who fit this description. Targeting specific physical features will be effective to native Berliners because they feel as if the ad is speaking directly to them. It is much more effective to sell clothing to a fair skinned, blonde haired girl when the girl in the advertisement has her same physical attributes.

Even on the plane from Duesseldorf to Berlin, I was flipping through a magazine and came across a four page spread for Jon Frieda. The first page is text only and it reads “Blond is nicht gleich blond.” The next pages are of a blonde woman and then different pictures of blonde hair and blonder hair. The third page in English it says “Go lighter. Go brighter. You’re a blonde. You can do anything you want.” This is a regional campaign because the magazine it was in (Joy) is not only published in Berlin. It is my guess that this ad will get a lot of attention and interest as well as desire from the group of women in this specific it is marketed to.

The strategy with this particular John Frieda (as seen above) campaign is the same as the various campaigns around Berlin. There is no market for minorities in this area so there is no immediate need to market to this niche. My suggestion however is to keep in mind that though there are few minorities that does not mean there are none. Models of color can easily be placed with “mainstream models” and then you can have a campaign that speaks to more than one target group and that also has the potential to be global.