Ad industry. Wake up or else!

This article by Chris Moerdyk on MarketingWeb has been republished with his permission as it sums up the recent hearings perfectly and sets the stage for an exciting year.

Anyone who thought that the two day hearings into racism in the ad and media industries held by the parliamentary portfolio committee on communication in Cape Town this week, would be the usual round of time wasting talk followed by absolutely no action, will surprised to hear that it has actually been a very necessary dab of turpentine up the backsides of the country's advertisers and marketers.

At the end of it all, not a single participant denied that the ad industry had not transformed sufficiently. Not a single participant denied that there was racism in the industry – albeit racism by default and not of the nasty, vicious kind involving hate and vindictive discrimination.

While government has no intention of getting involved either by legislation or watchdogging right now, it has given the industry a year to get together, talk it through and come up with sufficient action to chivvy things along a lot faster. In a year's time the portfolio committee will reconvene the hearings to check on progress.
Interestingly enough these hearings proved to be the first time that all stakeholders in the ad industry actually got together. Certainly, various bodies have spoken to each other but never before, all together, in one place.

And what was really scary was to witness the total lack of understanding among major stakeholders. For a start no-one in the ad, media or marketing industries was able to define what was meant by "black" media. Everyone had different ideas.
While they seemed to agree that current media research was seriously flawed and that it contributed to racial stereotyping, many of the delegates made exactly the same mistake by assuming that all black consumers thought, acted and purchased alike.

Equally, many participants insisted that the media market was simply divided into black and white readers, listeners and viewers. What a lot of stakeholders had simply not considered was that it was people with money – people of all different colours who had money – to whom advertising should be targeted.

There is also clearly some misunderstanding of what the advertising industry is all about by the public, members of parliament and some sections of the media industry who seem to regard advertising as a sort of national lottery , the proceeds of which should be dished out equitably to charitable causes.

It is clear that the marketing industry is going to have to work extremely hard to ensure that every sector of SA society understands that far from being a source of funding, advertising is an essential part of the economy and that if advertising budgets were forced to be spread around too thinly, marketers would simply resort to other methods of promotion.

Likewise if the content of advertising were to be over-regulated with too many categories of advertising banned then, TV and radio stations, newspapers and magazines would simply cease to exist.

There was no doubt that these hearings turned out to be a wake up call for the ad industry. Representative bodies such as the Association of Advertising Agencies and Media Directors Circle clearly assumed they were coming to the hearing to present conclusive evidence that transformation was happening.

Both these organisations were literally bludgeoned by members of the committee and black media owners.

But, that is not to say that either body didn't care or was intent on perpetuating what was seen by many to be racist practices.

The AAA is an organisation with integrity, run by an executive director with impeccable credentials and with a representative board of directors committed to transformation.

It is certainly not a racist organisation and perhaps its only faults are to have misread their pace of change and to be guilty of failing dismally to communicate what they are doing to government and the public of South Africa.

So, at the end of two days of confusing argument, jockeying for position, claims and counter claims of racism, just what is the road ahead?

It looks like the Department of Communication and the Government Communication and Information Services (both appear genuinely determined to be catalysts and certainly not meddlers) will take the initiative to establish a task force to put together an Indaba of all interested parties including the Association of Marketers, the Creative Directors Forum, the Media Directors' Circle, the Association of Advertising Agencies, Advertising Standards Authority, Print Media SA, the National Association of Broadcasters, Human Rights Commission, Gender Commission, office of the status of the child and disabled women , Icasa, Media Monitoring Project, Freedom of Expression organisation, Freedom of Commercial Speech Foundation and frankly anyone else who has even the most remote interest in the issue.

While this sounds like "just another talk shop" it is vital that all these players get together in a single forum. These hearings showed just how confused the industry is over all sorts of important issues.

The industry needs an overhaul. Media research is a vital component that has to be revisited because this is argued to be the very basis of racism, discrimination and stereotyping, in the industry.

Frankly our advertisers, marketers and media have one more shot at getting rid of this racism bogey. If they can't do it in a year and government steps in, it will be nobody's fault but their own.

Also be sure to visit MarketingWeb for the following presentations and submissions:

• New Africa Publications presentation
  
• Presentation by the Media Monitoring Project
  
• The Media Directors Circle's presentation
  
• Submission by the Association of Advertising Agencies
  
• Chris Moerdyk's submissions to the racism hearings