Color Bind

American Demographics, Sept 1, 2003

Byline: SANDRA YIN

Cynthia Morris is a family woman who has an MBA degree and an executive-level job. By day, she raises funds for national parks programs. By night, the 50-year old, married African American mother of two writes checks for such things as the tuition for one of her sons' college education and the renovations on the family's 3,500-square-foot house in Potomac, Md. Still, as the chief decision maker in her upper-middle-class household, Morris believes that, to marketers, she is out of sight and out of mind. "It's like a blind spot," she says. "People just don't see us as this influential segment that can make a difference in their market share."

Count Morris among the 13 million African American women, 18 and older, who register as a mere blip on the average marketer's radar. Marketers pay scant attention to this consumer segment, despite how fast the population of African American women is growing and the extent to which its spending power is increasing. The Census Bureau projects that the number of black women will grow twice as fast as the total population, surging 8 percent, to 14.2 million, in the next five years, compared with a 4 percent rate of growth for the general population. And in a 2002 report, New York City-based market researcher Packaged Facts projected that the spending power of African American women would increase by 32 percent, to $342 billion, in 2006, up from $259 billion in 2001. By contrast, the total population's spending power is projected to grow by 24 percent by 2006.

Here's the predicament. African American women account for 6.5 percent of the population in the United States and wield less economic clout than women overall. Significantly, however, black women set fashion trends and are prime consumers of many products and services. They overindex on certain media, making up 7 percent of prime-time TV viewers, 7 percent of all magazine readers and 8 percent of evening and late-night radio listeners (from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m.). And as key decision makers in their households, black women exert disproportionately greater influence in spending on a number of big-ticket budget items, including houses and cars.

But you would hardly know it, given the way advertisers treat black women. Less than 1 percent of total ad spending targets them, although they represented 3.3 percent of the $7.6 trillion in total buying power in the U.S. in 2002. If marketers had allocated a commensurate percentage on advertising that targeted the black woman, they would have spent $7.8 billion last year, $5.5 billion more than they did.

Advertiser reluctance to market aggressively to these consumers stems from a mix of fear and ignorance. "The fact is, marketers do not respect this audience," claims Darryl Mobley, publisher of Family Digest, a women's service magazine that focuses on African American families. Marketers tell him they value black women, but they have also expressed concerns about white backlash if someone black is cast in an ad. "A lot of folks use any excuse whatsoever to avoid marketing to this audience," Mobley says.

Even companies that do target advertising to African Americans hold back. Their discrete ethnic marketing budgets are often too small to have an impact, according to Barbara Britton, vice president and associate publisher of sales for Essence magazine. "We certainly face challenges," she says.

Part of the problem is that people still picture African American women as single mothers on welfare, according to Larry Woodard, president and CEO of Vigilante, a New York City-based advertising agency that specializes in the urban market. There is some truth to the claim that black women have below-average spending power. Their individual earned income averages $26,220, compared with $29,440 for all women 18 and older, reports Mediamark Research, Inc. And their average household income of $38,550 is 43 percent lower than the figure of $55,100 for all women.

Attribute much of the disparity to family structure: Black women are less likely than average to be part of a married couple. Therefore, the single income they often rely on - their own - has to go far. And in our society, they face additional hurdles. Both blacks and women are underrepresented in high income brackets. Further, because African American women are more likely to find employment in low-paying service occupations than their white peers, they are frequently at a financial disadvantage.

What marketing executives don't grasp is that African American women represent a very dynamic market. They are upwardly mobile, making gains in education and income. Almost half of black women have attended college (46 percent). The share of those who had attended college for four or more years increased to 17 percent in 2000, up from 4 percent in 1960. (As higher education relates to gender, more black women than black men, 25 and older, have earned at least a bachelor's degree.) Black women are somewhat more likely than white women to work (62 percent versus 60 percent), and 1 in 4 of those who are employed hold managerial or professional jobs. The median income of black women has grown at a faster rate during the past two decades than that of women overall.