Color Code Red

American Demographics, Feb 1, 2004 by Louise Witt

Byline: LOUISE WITT

Television ads for Colgate-Palmolive's Total Advanced Fresh toothpaste, one of its top-selling products, featured two couples: a Caucasian one and an African American one. But when the consumer-products company rolled out its print campaign in the fall, it sent out only ads with a white man and a white woman - even to black magazines.

After Ebony published the ads in its November 2003 issue, readers contacted the magazine to complain. So, Jeff Burns, associate publisher and senior vice president of advertising of the 1.7-million circulation publication, called Colgate-Palmolive managers to let them know that he thought that their ad agency had made a mistake by not sending a print ad featuring the black couple.

"A lot of people questioned why when this campaign featured an African American couple on TV it didn't have an African American couple in the prints ads," Burns says. "Traditionally, Colgate-Palmolive has been doing a very good job. It spends money and is involved in the African American market, but every now and then, something happens."

Colgate-Palmolive makes an effort to include various ethnic groups in its national advertising campaigns. A black couple, in fact, is prominently displayed on its Web site advertising Total toothpaste. But African American magazine execs and industry experts say the company's misstep is the latest example of how major advertisers still have a way to go to effectively reach African American readers. (Colgate-Palmolive didn't respond to calls. Essence magazine, with a circulation of a little more than 1 million, also ran the ad but didn't receive any complaints.)

Many national advertisers don't think they need to spend money placing ads in African American magazines to reach African Americans, while others that do buy space don't think they have to spend as much as they do in comparable mainstream ones. "What is true is that they don't get the level of support that their white counterparts get," says Ken Smikle, president of Target Market News, a Chicago-based marketing research firm specializing in the black consumer market.

Smikle estimates that companies spend $1.7 billion on ads targeted at African American consumers. About $400 million of that is spent on magazine advertising. "There are advertisers who value that market," he says, "then there are others that simply haven't stepped up to the plate."

"The term is consumer racism," says Alfred Edmond, editor-in-chief of Black Enterprise, a 34-year-old African American business publication with a circulation of 500,000. "There are the same demographics, but two different audiences: one black and one white. Advertisers don't feel as though they have to spend as much to reach the black audience."

Black Enterprise, for instance, wasn't able to snag ads from Dell Inc. and Microsoft Corp. until after some mainstream business publications folded after the dot-com debacle, including Industry Standard, Smart Business and Time Inc.'s E-company, which later merged its operations with Business 2.0. Edmond says his magazine wasn't hit as hard by the loss of high-tech advertisers, because it didn't have them in the first place. "The reason why we lost less is because we had less to begin with," he says. "The disparity in terms of advertising worked in our favor."

It's not that corporate America is consciously ignoring African American magazines. In some respects, industry observers say, they just don't know that they're there, or that they're important to African American consumers. That's because their ad buyers, who are mainly white, simply aren't familiar with the ethnic market. "Lack of education seems to be the biggest issue," says Linda Jefferson, senior vice president and director of media services at Burrell Communications, a Chicago ad agency that works with advertisers on multiracial accounts.

"You have young associate brand managers and young media planners at agencies and they're not as educated as they should be about African American media," Jefferson says. "They don't know who is the consumer, the media and the role these vehicles play in African American lives. So, a constant reeducation process has to happen."

Part of that education includes dispelling the assumption that if advertisers buy space in mainstream publications, they reach African Americans. "The overriding assumption is that the general market is spilling into the African American marketplace," Jefferson says. "So, there's no need to segment or find a way into these markets. General market is an euphemism for non-racial, non-multicultural market segments."

Samir Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., and a magazine consultant, agrees that as African Americans become more included in the main culture, advertisers don't think they have to rely on black publications to reach them. "The media is much more integrated," he says. "You see Beyonce and other African Americans in People magazine and other mainstream magazines. That's the major trend with any specialty: when it becomes mainstream, it loses its specialty."