Interesting study, one that suggests biases are common to many groups, with the wrinkle that ‘prompts’ of compassion appear to attenuate the effects:
The marketplace is becoming more inclusive than ever. Today, advertisements that include models from ethnic minorities are commonplace. That wasn’t the norm a few decades ago.
Academic and market research show that ethnic minority consumers like advertisements that include their own ethnic group. They also appreciate brands that use such advertising.
However, research has overlooked how ethnic minority consumers evaluate advertising that feature members of other ethnic minorities.
In a forthcoming paper in the International Journal of Research in Marketing, our team of marketing experts at three Canadian universities reports a backlash effect. Ethnic minority consumers feel more ostracized by advertisements featuring models who belong to other ethnic minority groups than they do when they see ads with white models. And that leads to a less favourable attitude toward those advertisements.
In North America, white models advertising a variety of products has been the norm for decades. We argue that when advertisers include ethnic minority models, racially diverse consumers take notice.
But if the models are not from their own ethnic group, they may wonder why the advertisers chose models of another race or culture. They question why their own ethnicity is not represented.
We conducted five experimental studies with American and Canadian participants belonging to different ethnic minority groups. Participants consistently reported more positive attitudes towards advertisements that featured white models. They felt ostracized by the advertisements featuring members of other ethnic minorities.
This backlash was especially true for participants whose membership in their own ethnic group was important to them. It was strongest for participants with so-called high social-dominance orientation, a personality trait indicative of political conservatism.
Advertisements that feature multiple models of different ethnicities suffer from the backlash too.
In one study, Asian and Latino American participants were shown a bank advertisement that included models from several ethnic backgrounds. For half of the participants, the advertisement included a person belonging to their own ethnicity. For the other half, the advertisement excluded models belonging to their own ethnicity.
Participants who saw the advertisement that featured a model of their own ethnic group evaluated the advertisement more positively than those who did not see their ethnic group represented.
Portrayals of compassion change ad perceptions
We also found that advertisements that promote thoughts of compassion do not face the same backlash as other advertisements. In one study, ethnic minority participants who viewed an advertisement featuring another ethnic minority showed higher preference for the advertisement when it included words like sympathetic, gentle and forgiving than when it did not include such words.
In general, compassion increases our perceived similarity to others. And so advertisements highlighting compassion make us more likely to see people as similar to us regardless of their ethnicity.
Our takeaway from this research is that ethnic minority consumers do not see themselves as one large minority group. They take note of which ethnicity is represented in advertisements, and may not appreciate advertisers who consistently overlook theirs.
We encourage advertisers to be inclusive, because ads featuring ethnic minorities are received positively by those groups that are included. Advertisers should also aim to be thoughtful when it comes to which ethnic groups they highlight in their advertising.
Makes sense. Alex Marland’s points about more transparency regarding the criteria for inclusion/exclusion are valid, however:
The extreme-right outlets The Rebel, Breitbart and the Daily Stormer are among more than 3,000 websites on an internal “blacklist” to ensure the federal government’s digital advertisements do not appear on sites promoting hate, porn, gambling and other subjects deemed unacceptable.
The expansive list also includes conservative news sites like the Drudge Report, the Washington Times, Gateway Pundit and the National Review, as well as many non-political websites, such as TMZ, Esquire and Cosmopolitan.
CBC News obtained a copy of a recent version of the list, dating from June, via an Access to Information request.
There are 3,071 websites on the current blacklist, which is maintained and regularly updated for the federal government by Cossette Media, the agency hired to place Ottawa’s ads online, on radio and TV and in newspapers. The vast majority of federal ad dollars is now directed to the web.
The released version of the blacklist is non-alphabetical and uncategorized, with no information about the date a website was added nor about the reasons for its inclusion.
“It has evolved consistently since it was established [in 2012], and continues to evolve as the internet landscape and industry trends change and technology advances,” Nicolas Boucher, spokesperson for Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), said in an email.
“Categories have expanded, and sensitivities evolve over time.”
Boucher, whose department co-ordinates federal advertising, declined to respond when asked about the reason for inclusion of particular websites, including some that appear innocuous.
But sites can be blacklisted because they “have consistently underperformed in advertising campaigns,” he noted. “Sites may also be excluded if there have been comments or complaints about the content.”
Breitbart added in December
Breitbart, the U.S.-based ultra-right website to which Steve Bannon recently returned after his departure as U.S. President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, was added to the list last December after complaints.
The move followed a social media campaign by Sleeping Giants, a shadowy activist group that emerged on Facebook and Twitter last November and pressed corporations to pull their ads from Breitbart, which also runs several affiliated websites.
Sleeping Giants focused on the Canadian government after an ad for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission appeared on the site for three days, Nov. 28-30, 2017, before being pulled. Previously, ads for Statistics Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada had also appeared there.
And in May this year, Sleeping Giants launched a campaign urging corporations to pull ads from Canadian ultra-right site The Rebel.
Boucher would not say when The Rebel was added to the blacklist, or why. (The outlet received a letter of support from Environment Minister Catherine McKenna last October when it applied for media accreditationat a climate conference in Morocco, in a press-freedom controversy.)
A Jan. 4 ministerial briefing note for PSPC outlines “brand safety measures” for determining which websites are forbidden when government digital ads are purchased via networks such as the Google Display Network.
“For digital advertising that is purchased programmatically — that is, by a computer, based on a series of parameters — we developed a list of acceptable sites referred to as a whitelist,” says the document, also obtained by CBC News under Access to Information.
‘Ensuring that editorial content does not incite racial hatred, discrimination or the subversion of Canada’s democratic system of government.’– Official criteria for excluding websites from receiving federal government ads
“For maximum safety, the whitelist is used in conjunction with a blacklist filter,” the document says.
“The screening process is based on criteria that the Government of Canada has been using for traditional media. These include ensuring that editorial content does not incite racial hatred, discrimination or the subversion of Canada’s democratic system of government.”
Boucher said that among the screened-out sites are those dealing with crime, death, tragedy, military conflict, “juvenile/gross/bizarre content,” profanity, rough language, sexually suggestive content, sensational and shocking content, gambling and sensitive social issues.
The in-house blacklist is an extra layer of “brand safety” supplementing the exclusion criteria that the Google Display Network and other ad services impose on their own distribution networks for all clients.
Governments should not ‘pick favourites’
An expert on political branding warns that governments too often focus on delivering messages directly to their political bases, and that advertising can be misused as a partisan tool.
Alex Marland, political science professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland and author of Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control (2016). (Memorial University)
“Our governments should not be picking favourites,” said Memorial University of Newfoundland political scientist Alex Marland, author of last year’s Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control.
“And because of the choices of media, you can communicate information to some Canadians, and other Canadians are never contacted.”
Marland said the Liberal government needs to be clear on exactly how and why websites are put on a blacklist, based on public and transparent principles, and how those websites can get off the list.
Among other sometimes surprising inclusions on the blacklist: men’s magazine Maxim, lingerie seller La Vie en Rose, female-targeted blog Jezebel, the promotional site for erectile dysfunction drug Cialis, sports sites SB Nation and Barstool Sports, Auto Trader, India Times, Mayo Clinic.
While the overall view appears to be that Lady Gaga played it safe, her goals were less so:
It was actually rather inspiring to listen to Lady Gaga talk about the goals she had for the performance at a press conference last week.
“Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us, so this performance is for everyone. I want to, more than anything, create a moment that everybody who’s watching will never forget—not for me, but for themselves,” she said.
This whole political statement debate? “The only statements I’ll be making during the halftime show are the ones that I have been consistently making throughout my career,” she said. “I believe in a passion for inclusion, I believe in the spirit of equality, and [I believe] the spirit of this country is one of love and compassion and kindness, so my performance will uphold those philosophies.”
It’s one thing to hear that, and another to watch it unfold over the course of 13 minutes on TV, fatigued from another week of horrifying headlines and cultural frustration that’s long passed its boiling point. Who knew how much we’d need Lady Gaga right now?
“Essentially, that kid that couldn’t get a seat at the cool kids table and that kid who was kicked out of the house because his mom and dad didn’t accept him for who he was? That kid is going to have the stage for 13 minutes,” she said. “And I’m excited to give it to them.”
CBC did a nice round-up of the messages of the ads, largely explicitly or subtly in favour of diversity and inclusion:
It’s rare that you want to watch the commercials. Normally you want to change channels, go get a snack or fast forward through them — except during the Super Bowl.
For Americans, commercials have long been part of the attraction. And this year — finally — Canadians got to take part in the fun, thanks to a CRTC decision.
Every year, more than 30 advertisers spend roughly $5 million US and aim to create the most memorable 30 to 90 seconds by stuffing commercials with celebrities, slapstick humour, cute animals or children.
This year’s crop of ads filled all the categories, but several nodded to the political climate since Donald Trump became president.
The messages
Shortly before kickoff, Coca-Cola’s replayed an ad originally from 2014, which featured America the Beautiful sung in eight different languages. The commercial seems to be a reaction to increased racial tensions in the U.S. New or not, this commercial struck a nice tone.
The most obviously political ad was from 84 Lumber, which had an earlier version rejected for being too controversial. The commercial features the journey of a woman and her daughter travelling through Mexico. The ad directs viewers online to see the conclusion.
At the end of the six-minute piece, you see the characters arrive at a towering wall and appearing defeated until they discover a gate in the wall. The ad ends with the words, “The will to succeed is always welcome here.”
The commercial is clearly in opposition to Trump’s plan to build a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
Not surprising that Facebook is doing this kind of analysis. Does not appear to work for Canadian political leanings when I checked my profile (no “Canadian politics” tab):
You may think you are discreet about your political views. But Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, has come up with its own determination of your political leanings, based on your activity on the site.
And now, it is easy to find out how Facebook has categorized you — as very liberal or very conservative, or somewhere in between.
Try this (it works best on your desktop computer):
That will bring you to a page with your ad preferences. Under the “Interests” header, click the “Lifestyle and Culture” tab.
Then look for a box titled “US Politics.” In parentheses, it will describe how Facebook has categorized you, such as liberal, moderate or conservative.
(If the “US Politics” box does not show up, click the “See more” button under the grid of boxes.)
Facebook makes a deduction about your political views based on the pages that you like — or on your political preference, if you stated one, on your profile page. If you like the page for Hillary Clinton, Facebook might categorize you as a liberal.
Even if you do not like any candidates’ pages, if most of the people who like the same pages that you do — such as Ben and Jerry’s ice cream — identify as liberal, then Facebook might classify you as one, too.
Facebook has long been collecting information on its users, but it recently revamped the ad preferences page, making it easier to view.
The information is valuable. Advertisers, including many political campaigns, pay Facebook to show their ads to specific demographic groups. The labels Facebook assigns to its users help campaigns more precisely target a particular audience.
For instance, Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign has paid for its ads to be shown to those who Facebook has labeled politically moderate.
Campaigns can also use the groupings to show different messages to different supporters. They may want to show an ad to their hard-core supporters, for example, that is unlike an ad targeted at people just tuning in to the election.
It is not clear how aggressively Facebook is gathering political information on users outside the United States. The social network has 1.7 billion active users, including about 204 million in the United States.
Political outlook is just one of the attributes Facebook compiles on its users. Many of the others are directly commercial: whether you like television comedy shows, video games or Nascar.
To learn more about how political campaigns are targeting voters on social media, The New York Times is collecting Facebook ads from our readers with a project called AdTrack. You can take part by visiting nytimes.comand searching for “Send us the political ads.”
American business realities compared to Republican party anti-minority messaging:
Each two-minute spots weaves footage of the actors utilizing Rewards tools like the Marriott mobile check-in to make their travel experience easier. Marriott collaborated with LatinWorks and director Braden Summers, in addition to Grey, on the campaign.
“We are proud to partner with such admired and compelling influencers in the Latino community who truly embody what the #LoveTravels campaign is all about,” said Stacey Milne, vice president, portfolio marketing strategy and planning, Marriott International. “Marriott embraces all and is dedicated to finding inspiring stories that illustrate how people pursue their dreams, and bring their passions to life when they travel.”
More on the inappropriate use by Employment Minister Poilievre use of government video services for partisan purposes (taking a lead from the PM’s 24/7 videos).
Should there be a change in government, there will likely be questions regarding whether or not deputies and senior officials provided any advice on the ethics of such advertising, particularly in the pre-writ period. There is also a risk that an incoming government may choose to emulate this approach rather than limiting it.
While Savoie is right that not all responsibility should fall on the shoulders of the Clerk and that all executives have a role in questioning such practices, the Clerk and deputies need to set the tone and provide space for other executives to challenge such requests:
Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre’s taxpayer-funded video to promote the Conservatives’ universal childcare benefit shows the traditional line between politics and the public service is a “no man’s land” where there are no rules, says a leading public administration expert.
Donald Savoie, a Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at Université de Moncton, said the online video “smacked” of partisanship to which public servants should have been “hyper-sensitive” coming only four months before a federal election.
“If anyone should know and be sensitive to the partisan line that should not be crossed, it’s the public service,” said Savoie. “They should not get involved in initiatives or measures that can viewed by Canadians, or opposition politicians, as partisan. They are guardians of the public interest, not the political interest.”
But Savoie said the rules and boundaries that once separated politicians and bureaucrats, and the workings of politics and administration have been “thrown out the window” — setting the stage for a creeping politicization of the public service.
There are still rules like those laid down in the communication policy and values-and-ethics code that are supposed to ensure that public servants don’t stray into partisan territory. And the department argued that it followed government policies in making the video.
But Savoie argues codes and policies don’t fill the void of rules that guided the traditional bargain between Canada’s non-partisan public servants and politicians. As a result, public servants don’t know what their roles are anymore in policy-making, operations or communications.
“No values and ethics code can paper over this no man’s land. The minister should have basic respect for public service, and senior public servants should have it too. It takes two to have a bargain. That old bargain is gone and we are searching for a new one,” said Savoie.
“So what’s the role of the public service in contemporary government? We haven’t defined the new rules. All we have are values and ethics and they have no teeth. We absolutely need a frank and open discussion on the role of the public service in policy making, operations and communications.”
Academics have for years warned that the traditional role of the public service was radically shifting as power gathered at the centre in the Prime Minister’s Office and its bureaucratic arm, the Privy Council Office.
That shift has accelerated by rapidly changing technology, the 24-hour news cycle, and governments obsessed with managing the message.
But critics argue that nothing has strained the neutrality of public servants like the Conservatives’ highly centralized and partisan approach to government communications.
Liberal MP David McGuinty argued that Privy Council Clerk Janice Charette, who heads the public service, should justify how public servants could work on what he called Poilievre’s “taxpayer-funded vanity video.”
The video was produced by department funds, and public servants were called in on a Sunday to work on it, including filming Poilievre glad-handing constituents.
But Savoie questions why the clerk should be on the hook when every public servant has been immersed in the values-and-ethics code.
“Don’t point the finger at the clerk,” said Savoie. “If you are an EX-1 or above you should know the importance of the value-and-ethics code and when you see a red flag like this a few months before a general election, live by it. You should be asking if this is appropriate. Values and ethics code covers everybody, not just the clerk.”
But Savoie said Poilievre, as a minister, should have known better.
“Ministers have a responsibility to back off and respect the line and realize what’s in the public interest and what’s in their own interest. It’s not all on the shoulder of the public service — the ministers shouldn’t be making inappropriate demands.”
The government pointed CBC News to “a combination of industry estimates,” several of which were written by Rick Miner, the president of Miner & Miner Ltd., a management consulting firm specializing in labour market issues.
Miner concluded that Canada will face a “major problem” with skilled worker shortages if nothing changes over the next 16 years.
But he told CBC News his projections are for overall labour and for skilled labour, not specific to the trades.
“I think you’d have a tough time finding somebody who is going to back that unless they have a real broad definition of both the trades and a broad definition of what they define as shortage,” Miner said.
“If somebody said … right now there’s a shortage of a million workers in the trades in Canada, I’d say that’s an inflated number. That’s not true.”
Asked if he could point to labour data showing Canada would face a shortage of “one million skilled trades” workers over the next decade, Miner said he could not.
The government also pointed to a 2013 estimate by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. But Sarah Anson-Cartwright, the chamber’s director of skills policy, told CBC News those forecasts originated from Miner’s older reports, which are not specific to the trades and have since been reviewed.
“The Canadian chamber does not cite the forecasts from Miner’s 2010 and 2012 reports since they are out-dated now.”
More on multicultural marketing from Mike Fromowitz of Ethnicity Multicultural Marketing + Advertising Inc:
In a recent Huffington Post article titled ‘Multicultural marketing: a must for multicultural countries.’ author Kimron Corion put it this way: “I realised that many businesses were using the same marketing message to target everyone, regardless of race and culture. Even though social media and the Internet have made it easier to do marketing, using the same generic message for everyone was not the best approach. I believe that people should be marketed to in their culture and their beliefs. And thats when I came in contact with a term that I believe has been revolutionising marketing. Maybe not more than the Internet has done, but I believe its a concept thats very important and many marketers should embrace it. Its called multicultural marketing or ethnic marketing.
“Multicultural marketing refers to marketing to one or more person of a particular ethnic background. This tends to take into consideration a persons age, gender, culture, norms, language, religion, traditions etc. to persuade that person to buy. Additionally people tend to stay within their cultural boundaries, their norms, traditions, culture, all tend to influence their buying habits. Multicultural marketing or ethnic marketing is very important and it is one of the factors that will help determine the success of many marketing campaigns.”
Immigrants the world over would rather be advertised to in their first language, within their cultural mores. Many of them wish to be communicated to in their language of choice—it’s more comfortable and appealing to them, and for many, it’s much easier than reading English. Culture takes time to learn and it’s not easy. So it’s better not to expect that everybody reading your ad will understand any subtle, implicit culturally related message. Irony and culture is similar – either you get it or you don’t.
Lack of judgement and values – Coke normally does better than this:
In March, Coke installed five special phone booths in Dubai labor camps that accepted Coca-Cola bottle caps instead of coins. In exchange for the cap from a bottle of Coke—which costs about fifty-four cents—migrant workers could make a three-minute international call. The ad shows laborers in hard hats and reflective vests lining up to use the machine—and grinning, for the first time in the video, as they wait. “I’ve saved one more cap, so I can talk to my wife again tomorrow,” one man tells the camera. More than forty thousand people made calls using the machines. Then, in April, after the booths had been up for about a month, the company dismantled them
I sent links to the ads to Nicholas McGeehan, a Gulf researcher for Human Rights Watch who has studied labor conditions in Dubai. I was interested in his take on the questions of appropriateness and ethics that some viewers had raised. The videos, he said, were “odious.” For one thing, he said, Coke is not only using these low-income workers to advertise its product, it is also requiring them to buy soft drinks themselves—at nearly a tenth of their typical daily wages, he pointed out—to use the special phone booth. On top of that, he feels that the ads normalize and even glorify the hardship faced by migrant workers—at least some of whom may be working against their will. “If this was two hundred years ago, would it be appropriate for Coke to do adverts in the plantations of the Deep South, showing slaves holding cans of Coke?” he asked. “It is a normalization of a system of structural violence, of a state-sanctioned trafficking system.”
Interesting study. The counterpart is, I think, Tim Hortons ads which have been more inclusive (the 2010 “Welcome to Canada” ad about a new Canadian immigrant welcoming his family to Canada is a classic):
A series of food ads on primetime TV significantly underrepresented black and Asian actors in favour of white actors, and at the same time pigeon-holed both minority and majority actors into portraying inaccurate racial caricatures.
Sociology professor Shyon Baumann and recent PhD graduate Loretta Ho looked at food-related commercials aired on CTV, Global and CBC between 2008 and 2009 to study racial representation in advertising. They found the ads squeezed actors of different races into precise, stereotypical roles, like the “natural”, holistic white persona, or the working class, “blue-collar” black caricature.
Multicultural Meanderings 