Can Marketing Directed at African Americans Be Exploitative?

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.     –James Baldwin

The recent chicken sandwich wars between Chick Fila and Popeyes was interesting to watch. It became a trending topic on social media and offline as lines formed around the block at Popeyes restaurants. Although other ethnic groups eat at this fast food chain, their core audience is poor and working class African Americans and that is where many of their stores are located.

According to a 2018 Nielsen report Black Dollars Matter: The Sales Impact of Black Consumers, African Americans make up just 14% of the population but we are responsible for some $1.2 trillion in annual purchases.

That is a lot of money and marketers know this. 

Discussing the aggressive shady marketing strategies of certain companies with Black professionals is where I first heard Negro Targeting. Based on my research, the term was initially coined to refer to the racial terrorism that African Americans endured in the early and mid 20th century in the South. A 1997 John Singleton film documented an example of this based on the Rosewood Massacre in Florida. In 1923, a white mob burned a mostly Black town to the ground because a white woman falsely accused a Black man of rape. The term Negro Targeting probably was adopted to reflect the antipathy that they feel towards these companies. Black people have always distrusted the media and with good reason. However, many of us forget that marketing is why most media exists in the first place.

Selling to African Americans

There is a 20 minute documentary that debuted in 1954 called The Secret of Selling the Negro. Yup, that is the actual name. It was financed by Johnson Publishing Company. At one time, they were the largest African American owned publishing firm in the U.S. and the publisher of Ebony magazine. It is clear that that this film was made by them because the announcer states that the solution to reaching Black people is…Ebony Magazine. It was first published in 1945 and Jet Magazine followed in 1951. (Ebony announced this year that it was shutting down while Jet was shuttered in 2014). According to Wikipedia, the goal of the documentary was to encourage advertisers to use African-American media.

Although the film was released over 60 years ago before I was even born, I still have a right to say that it is downright creepy.

At the 2:26 minute mark, the announcer calls African Americans a fresh market. What he really meant was that the market was new to most white marketers and businesses. So, it is obvious who is the audience for this film.

There are three habits of African American spending stated in the documentary (11:43 minutes) by a sales psychologists (whatever that is):

1. Brand Conscious (11:35 minutes): Connecting emotional benefits to well known brands.
2. Aspirational Spenders (13:10 minutes): Connecting emotional benefits to quality.
3. Brand Loyalty (13:58 minutes): Connecting emotional benefits to devotion.

In today’s marketing circles, these habits still generally ring true although better demographic terms are used like the African American market, urban market and multicultural market. For example in the 1980s, Nike took the athletic aspirations present in urban African American culture and sold it back to poor and working class Black youth with the help of phenomenal NBA rookie Michael Jordan. Air Jordan sneakers and gear made a big splash. Since Black youth were the gateway to authenticity for white suburban youth, they helped make Jordans the reigning #1 sneaker and propelled Nike to billion dollar global lifestyle brand status. However, in the process of making Nike sneakers synonymous with urban aggressiveness and militant athleticism, the other consequence was an extreme overvaluation of the sneaker by Black youth. Imagine how much it cost to produce a pair of these sneakers and by whom? Unfortunately, Nike and Michael Jordan had very little to say when some Black youth began to kill each other over the sneakers. Did Nike exploit the cultural capital of urban young Black men? Did they exploit the economic capital of developing countries? These are the dilemmas that come with globalization as the first world gains more access to the rest of the world’s culture and resources.

The Voltron of Twitter

Twitter has become an echo chamber for the mainstream media (MSM). Twitter users are adept at releasing breaking news first. The Arab Spring was first reported live via Twitter until their governments effectively shut it out of their countries. President Trump has amplified this practice even more by being our first Twitter in Chief who releases his thoughts to social media and then to the MSM. This has given Twitter, as a media disseminator, outsized influence on news and culture.

The documentary above mentions that African Americans are a pre sold market. This means that we receive our ideas about products/services from African American owned media. This was true in the 1950s because there were few media outlets owned by African Americans celebrating Black people. But today, many traditional media outlets have Black faces on them but few are owned by us. The digital revolution has fragmented some parts of the media landscape even more so it is easier to have a voice. Although Twitter is not Black owned, its online laissez faire moderator culture has attracted marginalized voices who often struggle to be heard via legacy media. In spite of this, African Americans still are heavy television viewers. But this is changing among younger Black people as they use multiple screens and flock to social media platforms.

Black Twitter occasionally fills this pre sold market role. Meredith Clark, a professor at the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas, has studied Black Twitter. Her definition is a temporally linked group of connectors that share culture, language and interest in specific issues and talking about specific topics with a black frame of reference. Keep in mind that Twitter is where Black Lives Matter first took off as a hashtag and a movement. Also, activists protesting the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO tweeted their actions live.

Professor Clark breaks Black Twitter down into three levels of connection:

• Personal community: The people you are loosely connected to.
• Thematic notes: Certain topics repeatedly being tweeted so the subject matter stays fresh.
• Meta-Network: The intersection of personal communities and the thematic notes around a specific topic. Hashtags campaigns are often the result.

As a result, Black Twitter has played the role of influencer (giving messages a sense of legitimacy), enforcer (retaliatory actions) and town crier (getting messages out fast and wide) on specific issues. This is how Black Twitter helped the Popeye chicken sandwich war go viral.

Considering that most social media influencers are white, Black Twitter’s reach is bucking the trends. The only other group on social media that may compare to their reach is the LGBTQA  and feminist communities. But the difference is that the reach for both of these groups is buoyed by online and offline allies. (In all fairness, these three communities on Twitter often overlap as intersectionality becomes the primary way of discussing ideas. Lately, this has not been the case as discussions around transgenderism become more combative.)

In short, Black Twitter is like Voltron. These diverse group of online Black individuals are loosely connected until a perceived opportunity or threat brings them together.

Voltron is an 1980s anime inspired animated television series that features a team of five space explorers who each pilot a lion-like robot. Each robot is a different color. When the universe is threatened, these different colored robots fit together into a large super robot called Voltron. Watch the whole intro above. (I watched this cartoon in middle school. Ha!)

The online creative output of Black Twitter has created meme worthy phrases that often leapt offline and formed campaigns. So, their voltron-like influence can reach through the computer and have real world consequences.

Does Negro Targeting Really Still Happen?

From a marketing perspective, yes. I am stating this because, as James Baldwin says above, this is the ugly side of part of my profession. Marketing can be done right but it can also border on unethical. As someone who grew up poor and does design and marketing research, I have experienced and seen the strategies directed toward low income and working class African Americans as I travel around the country. Last year, I was hired to complete a design and market research report for a credit union before they opened a branch in Philadelphia. Their target audience is low and moderate income (LMI) African Americans and Puerto Ricans. I am proud to say that the strategies I provided them are ethical and transparent. Although, I cannot show you the research because I signed a disclosure agreement, the biggest attribute I emphasized was long term relationship: Becoming a part of their communities over time in authentic ways and they will show you how to reach them. Most big financial institutions targeting these groups stay in their corporate offices and allow well placed consistent advertising to do the heavy lifting. In their defense, advertising does work but relationships go further.

Negro Targeting is obviously a form of market exploitation. It is predicated upon the target’s vulnerability: A lack of time or interest to gather suitable information to make an informed decision. Therefore, certain signifiers (price, access, deadlines, gossip, etc.) use fear, uncertainty and doubt to encourage impulse responses.

FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) is a very real sales and marketing tactic. It is designed to impact decision making on an emotional level. For example, if a bully threatened me in elementary school, one response could be to take a different, possibly longer route home. But today because of the growing all-encompassing nature of constant marketing via smartphones, a boy may decide that he needs a pair of Nike sneakers that will allow him to run faster. The real question that needs to be asked is why would a kid think sneakers, specifically Nike and not others, would help dispel his fear and give him confidence? This looks like rational decision making…but it is not. It is an emotional response. In short, Negro Targeting is FUD 2.0.

Sorry to break this to you but consumer psychologists have known for a long time that we make purchases based on FUD. The problem is this approach can exploit vulnerabilities in an audience that can have real consequences because of the digital age. What if this kid, while trying to outrun the bully in his new Nike sneakers, decides that he can outrun a bus coming right at him? I understand that common sense, media literacy, parent and municipalities have a responsibility to protect children from their worst impulses. (Sidenote: Common sense is what kept me from parachuting off of a 3-story rowhome with a trash bag. I thought I would float down because I saw it in a cartoon. I was 10 years old. However, I still made other childish decisions.) But the truth is many of the mechanisms above that protected children in the past aren’t always functioning at full capacity or in concert with each other today. Some have been replaced with screens (smartphone, TV, etc.) . This leaves children, especially those in disadvantaged communities, vulnerable to deceptive marketing messages and their own worst impulses. I saw this a lot when I was a youthworker in these communities. This is where Negro Targeting has been supremely effective.

*Keep in mind I am not trying to say all of these types of businesses do this.

*Keep in mind I am not trying to say all of these types of agencies/organizations do this.

Conclusion

African Americans historically do not trust MSM. This may be why Black Twitter has become ‘a thing’. But exploitative disinformation can be marketed to specific audiences via the internet. It can come from a company, an individual or from the shadows. In this age of instant outrage, we need to be careful with how quickly we react to online information. Although it can easily leave a trail, only people with a special IT skillset can properly trace it. As a result, fake news and alternative facts is harder to track and detect for the rest of us. 

How do I know Negro Targeting still happens?

“Propagandists need an audience, and paid advertising helped the Internet Research Agency (IRA) facilitate audience growth. 73 different IRA-affiliated Pages and Instagram accounts were part of an ads operation that consisted of 3519 ads (video as well as still images). Ads were used to drive users to Like Pages, follow Instagram accounts, join Events, and visit websites…The Facebook and Instagram ads, which were run by both Right and Left-leaning pages, as well as Black community-targeted pages, reinforced themes and messages to clearly-defined audiences…Most of the interest-based targeting focused on African American communities and interests. “

The above quote is from page 34 in The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency, a report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee about the attempted Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. The IRA, a company based in St. Petersburg, created an expansive cross-platform media mirage targeting the Black community, which shared and cross-promoted authentic Black media to create an immersive influence ecosystem. The IRA is owned by an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

I just dropped a David Chappelle-like bomb for you and this should scare you. This…is Negro Targeting of the worst kind. 

What do you think?