What I usually see in ads are completely unbelievable depictions of society – every couple is mixed race, about half are same-sex, and there is more focus on signaling fealty to the diversity gods than on promoting any product.
As a former producer of TV commercials I can recall that what all one saw in ads were exclusively white people in heteronormative situations. Trying to cast a person of colour, a disabled person, a dwarf or a queer individual was nigh on impossible. So I guess that what you are saying is that you would like us to return to the dark days of advertising where the multi cultural society we have lived in for decades was simply denied by the advertising industry. Tragic.
It appears companies are now required to follow a DEI checklist, to hire and to sell. If they can get something in about climate in their ad, even better. I’ll believe these ads aren’t just virtual signalling when I see a hijab wearing muslim women with a Sikh husband or two gay muslim men. Of course, these ads wouldn’t last long. Unlike the white population, terrified at being called racist and therefore afraid to call BS, you’d quickly hear from the Muslim and Sikh communities. In the end, one doesn’t have to go far outside ones door to see advertisements depiction of diversity doesn’t reflect reality. Oh, and David, immediately using an ad hominem attack is almost as lame as the ads we see.
There IS a DEI checklist: Bloomberg reports that of corporate hires in 2021, 94% went to People of Color. (How could this have been just random?) Well-chosen hypotheticals, Muslim/Sikh, gay Muslim couple. Spot on about the ad hominem, too.
Stuart Bennett
5 months ago
It’s another example of people disappearing up their own backsides and forgetting/ignoring what human nature really is. Aspiration is vanishing (in advertising as in individuals) in favour of a clawing need to be viewed as special right now, rather than setting out achieve something to deserve it first.
Matt M
5 months ago
I see almost no adverts day to day so it must be very hard for advertisers to get through to people like me.
I don’t watch TV. I pay for all the media I consume, none of which comes with advertisements. I avoid social media like the plague. I pay for the ad-free version of YouTube and ignore the recommended videos. I work from home so I’m not on the Tube or train everyday staring at ads.
Whenever I do see TV adverts (for instance on TV at someone else’s house), I am shocked by them – the general mawkishness, the ugliness and/or ethnicity of the actors and actresses, the woke message. It has changed a lot since the days of Carling Black Label.
Over represented by what metric? Is there some requirement that adverts need their actors to align exactly with the national proportions of each racial background?
Even if BAME people are over represented, why would that be shocking to anyone? Is the appearance in an advert of someone who looks a bit different to you so terrifying?
I can’t possibly reckon 00’s ethnicity but suppose the same point was stated by someone Black. (Who, presumably, would not be upset by Black people on TV.) What then?
Cut out the “champagne” and go back to consuming Pepsi. The “champagne” has obviously gone to your head. BTW, is your hair color “champagne” and are part of the “Q-tip” generation?
“Is there some requirement that adverts need their actors to align exactly with the national proportions of each racial background?” Well, there is a great hue and cry when groups are underrepresented relative to their demographic strength.
They used to be 90% white people, now (13 years after I stopped watching telly) they seem to be 90% non-white. Yet the country is still 90% white. It is very odd.
Very obviously not 90% non-white! I think you are seeing what you want to see, old boy!
Even if it was, so what? Does the appearance of non-white people on television “shock” you so much? Why?
Who looks EXACTLY like me? (Oh, yeah, they all look exactly alike . . . )
Allison Barrows
5 months ago
Loved this. I was born in the late 50s and grew up with the creative ads through the 60s (remember booze and cigarette spots on TV?, the “Woody Allen” stomach talking to its therapist?), before majoring in advertising during the 70s. I worked in advertising for the first 20 years of my professional life.
I watch little TV now, but what ads I do see are cringe-inducing embarrassments. The clever people have long since gone and socially terrified, barely literate, AI-dependent submediocrities have filled the chasm.
Judging by your un-professional, caustic, sarcastic and trite comments, your 20 years of professional employment in “add advertising must have been spent in janitorial services.
Thanks for joining the group, Bo, but you may wish to complete your remedial reading course before jumping right in and making a complete fool of yourself!
Otherwise, great work!
Daniel Lee
5 months ago
What happened in 1965 that might explain Madison Avenue’s sudden awareness of hip? The first of the Baby Boomers turned 20 and started spending their own money.
Surely the only surgery drink worthy of the name is Dr. Pepper.
Georgivs Novicianvs
5 months ago
Hip sells. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.
jane baker
5 months ago
Since I tossed my TV out the window (from 10 floors up) I’m so happy not to endure TV ads. At least on YouTube you can skip them. It’s true that by the mid 1980s our British TV ads had got very sophisticated and more social commentary than product placement.
Some were charming. Some were funny,witty and on point about some sort of contemporary social phenomenon in the guise.of promoting a product. Happy Days. The ads I object to these days (in my head ) are food ads. They really annoy me. In a bad tempered unreasonable sort of way. It’s the gregarious jollity of them.
Whatever food item is the subject,be it oven chips,chicken portions,slices of bread,pots of yoghurt etc,the people consuming it with relish are always a large diverse,multi cultural,mixed age family all stuffed around a huge table that fills a kitchen so there is barely space to walk round it. The table is covered with appetising food items and this rainbow family are animatedly shoving it down their gobs while maintaining eye contact,grinning and laughing and all expressing familial love. Actually whats not to like about any of that imagery? It’s unpleasant and unreasonable of me to find it annoying,but I do.
What I usually see in ads are completely unbelievable depictions of society – every couple is mixed race, about half are same-sex, and there is more focus on signaling fealty to the diversity gods than on promoting any product.
As a former producer of TV commercials I can recall that what all one saw in ads were exclusively white people in heteronormative situations. Trying to cast a person of colour, a disabled person, a dwarf or a queer individual was nigh on impossible. So I guess that what you are saying is that you would like us to return to the dark days of advertising where the multi cultural society we have lived in for decades was simply denied by the advertising industry. Tragic.
It may be getting ‘multicultural’ quickly but most ethnic Brits (and many newcomers) wish it wasn’t.
And I certainly don’t want social engineering in ads, exemplified by the ASA’s code change a few years ago.
“most ethnic Brits”
Nah. Just the racist ones.
Ah, that probably explains why I no longer watch commercials.
Because you are a racist? Yes, we already knew that…
It appears companies are now required to follow a DEI checklist, to hire and to sell. If they can get something in about climate in their ad, even better. I’ll believe these ads aren’t just virtual signalling when I see a hijab wearing muslim women with a Sikh husband or two gay muslim men. Of course, these ads wouldn’t last long. Unlike the white population, terrified at being called racist and therefore afraid to call BS, you’d quickly hear from the Muslim and Sikh communities. In the end, one doesn’t have to go far outside ones door to see advertisements depiction of diversity doesn’t reflect reality. Oh, and David, immediately using an ad hominem attack is almost as lame as the ads we see.
There IS a DEI checklist: Bloomberg reports that of corporate hires in 2021, 94% went to People of Color. (How could this have been just random?) Well-chosen hypotheticals, Muslim/Sikh, gay Muslim couple. Spot on about the ad hominem, too.
It’s another example of people disappearing up their own backsides and forgetting/ignoring what human nature really is. Aspiration is vanishing (in advertising as in individuals) in favour of a clawing need to be viewed as special right now, rather than setting out achieve something to deserve it first.
I see almost no adverts day to day so it must be very hard for advertisers to get through to people like me.
I don’t watch TV. I pay for all the media I consume, none of which comes with advertisements. I avoid social media like the plague. I pay for the ad-free version of YouTube and ignore the recommended videos. I work from home so I’m not on the Tube or train everyday staring at ads.
Whenever I do see TV adverts (for instance on TV at someone else’s house), I am shocked by them – the general mawkishness, the ugliness and/or ethnicity of the actors and actresses, the woke message. It has changed a lot since the days of Carling Black Label.
You are shocked by the ethnicity of the actors in adverts?
What part of that, exactly, is shocking to you?
Maybe he means that BAME people are over represented in adverts, which is undoubtedly true..
Over represented by what metric? Is there some requirement that adverts need their actors to align exactly with the national proportions of each racial background?
Even if BAME people are over represented, why would that be shocking to anyone? Is the appearance in an advert of someone who looks a bit different to you so terrifying?
R u ok hun?
Tip top, sonny!
This study done in 2019 by Channel 4 shows a metric that might answer your question. Black people made up 3% of the population and featured in 37% of ads.
Quite a metric, don’t you think?
https://www.isba.org.uk/system/files/media/documents/2020-12/c4-study-mirror-on-the-industry.pdf
So what?
Does the appearance of black people on tv upset you so much?
I can’t possibly reckon 00’s ethnicity but suppose the same point was stated by someone Black. (Who, presumably, would not be upset by Black people on TV.) What then?
Cut out the “champagne” and go back to consuming Pepsi. The “champagne” has obviously gone to your head. BTW, is your hair color “champagne” and are part of the “Q-tip” generation?
“Is there some requirement that adverts need their actors to align exactly with the national proportions of each racial background?” Well, there is a great hue and cry when groups are underrepresented relative to their demographic strength.
They used to be 90% white people, now (13 years after I stopped watching telly) they seem to be 90% non-white. Yet the country is still 90% white. It is very odd.
Very obviously not 90% non-white! I think you are seeing what you want to see, old boy!
Even if it was, so what? Does the appearance of non-white people on television “shock” you so much? Why?
That’s the wrong question. The right one is why are advertisers following strategies that annoy the very people to whom they are trying to sell?
Why would you be annoyed by the appearance in adverts of people who don’t look exactly like you?
Gosh! You are so cool.
Why can’t you answer the question?
Why does the appearance of black people in adverts “shock” you so much?
Who looks EXACTLY like me? (Oh, yeah, they all look exactly alike . . . )
Loved this. I was born in the late 50s and grew up with the creative ads through the 60s (remember booze and cigarette spots on TV?, the “Woody Allen” stomach talking to its therapist?), before majoring in advertising during the 70s. I worked in advertising for the first 20 years of my professional life.
I watch little TV now, but what ads I do see are cringe-inducing embarrassments. The clever people have long since gone and socially terrified, barely literate, AI-dependent submediocrities have filled the chasm.
” I worked in advertising for the first 20 years of my professional life.”
This is plainly not true.
Judging by your un-professional, caustic, sarcastic and trite comments, your 20 years of professional employment in “add advertising must have been spent in janitorial services.
Thanks for joining the group, Bo, but you may wish to complete your remedial reading course before jumping right in and making a complete fool of yourself!
Otherwise, great work!
What happened in 1965 that might explain Madison Avenue’s sudden awareness of hip? The first of the Baby Boomers turned 20 and started spending their own money.
Killer fact! My last “surgery” drink was a Coke.
Kool Aid for the trans generation.
It’s time they stopped selling it in hospitals and health centres!
Surely the only surgery drink worthy of the name is Dr. Pepper.
Hip sells. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.
Since I tossed my TV out the window (from 10 floors up) I’m so happy not to endure TV ads. At least on YouTube you can skip them. It’s true that by the mid 1980s our British TV ads had got very sophisticated and more social commentary than product placement.
Some were charming. Some were funny,witty and on point about some sort of contemporary social phenomenon in the guise.of promoting a product. Happy Days. The ads I object to these days (in my head ) are food ads. They really annoy me. In a bad tempered unreasonable sort of way. It’s the gregarious jollity of them.
Whatever food item is the subject,be it oven chips,chicken portions,slices of bread,pots of yoghurt etc,the people consuming it with relish are always a large diverse,multi cultural,mixed age family all stuffed around a huge table that fills a kitchen so there is barely space to walk round it. The table is covered with appetising food items and this rainbow family are animatedly shoving it down their gobs while maintaining eye contact,grinning and laughing and all expressing familial love. Actually whats not to like about any of that imagery? It’s unpleasant and unreasonable of me to find it annoying,but I do.