The power of a mirror

An American study done by Kristen Harrison and Nicole Martins in 2012 correlated the number of hours that children watched TV with their self-esteem scores. When comparing the scores of white boys and girls as well as black boys and girls, the results showed that the white boys had the highest self-esteem scores. Although the white children watched less TV on average, other researchers have attributed the large difference in scores to the difference in gender and racial representation in American programming.

Nomalanga Mphuthi

Why? Well this is because regardless of whether a child is watching a cartoon, sitcom or action movie, the hero or main character is most likely to be a white male. This boosts the white boys’ self-esteem, because they’re able to see themselves represented in a positive light as well as in various roles. On the contrary, in American programming, black females are barely represented and if they are, it is often as base stereotypes such as the sassy best friend, the help, or some other side character that doesn’t grow, but helps the main character shine.

A diversity in media specialist, Carlos Corte, describes mass media as a teacher. This is because those in the industry have the power to choose which type of people they will feature and how they will be portrayed. Their portrayal choices affect how people interpret different groups of people as well as how people interpret their own identity, as we saw in the case of the self-esteem study. If certain groups are constantly portrayed in a certain light (for example, black males are often portrayed as scary, lazy or poor in popular programming), then others may start to see this as truth - especially if exposed to these images from a young age and made even worse if they are not exposed to diverse populations in real life.

Fortunately, in South Africa, our TV programming gives black people a wide range of characters that truly represent our people. But this is still a huge issue in our advertising agencies. Most agency staff is white, which doesn’t represent our population. As Ross Chowles, creative strategist at Jupiter Drawing Room, says, “What’s in the agency must be what’s outside the agency.” Although there are some black people being hired, there is a low intake, because of the tendency of senior employees to hire people similar to them - not only in terms of race, but also in terms of having formalised education like degrees, which further reduces the pool of potential black hires. It creates an atmosphere where keeping the “old boys club” intact is prioritised over diversity and wealth of ideas. As a result, the majority of staff in agencies is still white and most of the top-level positions are filled by white men. This often creates a disconnect between the creative team and the target audience. This results in adverts based on shallow stereotypes.

Stereotypes in advertising

As part of my research, I reached out to other black people via Facebook to give me examples of adverts that they felt were clear examples of the creators using shallow stereotypes. Many mentioned adverts that played on the “loud, big mama” trope, as well as crowds being depicted as over-dramatic, which plays on the “loud, black" stereotype.

Another trope that came up was that black people are always singing and dancing. This trope is present in adverts across every category. The black people singing and dancing trope in adverts is problematic, because it seems as if the white creators’ only exposure to black people and culture came from MTV, so it is assumed that we’re always dancing and singing at any chance we get - which is definitely not true.

Other issues that were highlighted was the way in which black people are often portrayed to be poorer than white people. For example, in many washing powder ads, there is usually a black woman in rural areas using the hand wash version and a white woman using the washing machine, which creates the image that no black people can afford to live in the suburbs and own a washing machine. And of course, the fact that only women are shown doing the laundry perpetrates harmful gender stereotypes. Another person mentioned that for soap adverts, often black people are portrayed using the bar soap version and white people are shown using the more expensive shower gel.

Overall, what we see from these kinds of adverts is that there is a typical teenager-parent relationship, because there’s a major disconnect between the audience and the creatives. Adverts targeted at black consumers end up using these stereotypes, because there is no knowledge of the consumer within the agencies and little to no research is done on the market. When researching this topic, there was a strong sense that many black, especially poorer, consumers felt like these ads are patronising and actually put them off the product, no matter how great the product claims to be. There is also the sense that low-to-middle income black consumers aren’t truly valued by their brands, because their ads use base stereotypes, but ads targeted to higher income people have research behind it and are well executed. Also, that disconnect results in adverts that the creators may think are funny, but in reality is quite offensive or the “joke” falls flat.

As I have previously mentioned, the media acts as a teacher and it’s important to for us in the advertising/communication space to take that role seriously. We’ve seen from the studies I’ve mentioned that what people are exposed to by the media can affect people’s perceptions of themselves and others. If we continue to have these harmful stereotypes in our advertising, then we will be part of the problem and can be held partly responsible for the racial divides that persist in our country.

Create a diverse workplace

The only way to improve these issues is by encouraging more racial diversity within agencies. These people shouldn’t be hired just as tokens or only as a sounding board, but should be given the opportunity to make meaningful contributions. Hiring more people of colour will help to provide more insightful thinking and produce adverts that will actually relate to the audience. It will also show the agencies’ commitment to improving the country by having an integrated staff. It’s also important for those in senior positions to be more open to their teams’ ideas, especially if the members of the team are part of and know more about the target market. Most importantly, we can shatter the stereotypes!

A mirror is something that we use every day to look at ourselves and make sure we look good for the day. It is also the only way we’re able to see ourselves: what we look like in that moment and how we’re presenting ourselves to the world. Just like a mirror, media can influence the way we see ourselves and affect our interpretation of others, so let’s make sure it reflects who we truly are.

Mphuthi was one of the Marketing, Advertising and Communications graduates to present at Red & Yellow School of Logic and Magic's MAC Live 2016.

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