Friday, April 3, 2009

Minority Advertisement

Oklahoma Gazette: Print Media
Number of Ads- 98
Minorities in Ads/Ads - 5

At of all the ads the minority ones were that of restaurants, mainly Chinese Buffet. No ads featured minorities in it at all.

Entertainment Weekly: Print Media
Number of Ads- 9
Minorities in Ads/Ads- 0

No Ads featuring minorities at all. I picked this magazine because it was that of my roommates and It deals with the Entertainment Industry.

Reality TV: Making the Band- MTV- 8pm Tue
Number of Ads- 6
Minorities in Ads/Ads- 2

The Oklahoma Daily: Print Media
Number of Ads- 6
Minorities in Ads/Ads- 0

Im not that surprised that there are no minorities in any ads in the daily. Even though OU is pretty diverse, I dont think there is a big enough diversity in the paper for that.

The Midwest City Sun: Print Media
Number of Ads- 13
Minorities in Ads/Ads- 0

The Sun is a community paper with no ads of minorities at all. Though it features blacks in sports articles, it has no ads of diversity in the paper.

NCAA Basketball (NIT Tournament) ESPN 6pm
Number of Ads- 15
Minorities in Ads/Ads- 6

NBA Basketball (Cavaliers vs. Magic) ESPN Fri 7pm
Number of Ads- 10
Minorities in Ads/Ads- 2


Im really not that surprised about the lack of diversity in ads. It's what the reading talked about, A majority of ads have minorities in the background and if it is an ad featuring minorities its associated with alcohol, food and cars. I feel like a majority of the time people dont want to see minorities because the feel like if they cant relate to them then they cant relate to the product. I dont think things will ever change in these situation as long as people have there issues about what they see.

5 comments:

  1. I agree. I do not think the representation of minorities will increase unless the social perception of minorities changes. Society has to realize we all can relate at some level. Everyone needs cars and everyone needs to eat and I'm pretty sure everyone needs clothes. I know this is naive to think ads should represent everyone; I know the ad is trying to reach a certain demographic, but something has to be done! The ratio of ads featuring white people and those featuring minorities was ridiculous. When I was looking through the ads I never noticed that ads featuring minorities were advertising alcohol or cars. However, I did notice African Americans were usually in the mix of people in the ads for fast food restaurants.

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  2. I don't think it's generally true that people don't WANT to see minorities, I think it's that advertisers are afraid to include them and 'alienate' whites. Also, I don't know if it's an issue of relating either. Most of the minorities I saw were celebrities, which would seemingly make them LESS relatable. I imagine it mostly stems from terrified advertisers assuming an ad with minorities will only appeal to minorities. And maybe for some people this is true, that a minority is a turn-off for a product, but it's time to push those people aside and start working on diversity in the media.

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  3. Like Allison said, it's not that people don't want to see minorities, it's the fact that advertisers use less minorities. Advertisers think that certain minorities can't appeal to everyone. However, I think this is the wrong approach. There should be more diversity in advertising and I think it will slowly change over time, but it will surely take a long time before much change happens.

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  4. Elliot - I agree with both Allison and Melanie in that a lack of minorities in advertising is more so due to the fact that they may not be considered part of a product/service’s target audience. I can’t really think of a time when I have thought that I would not go buy something simply because a minority was pictured promoting it. While the instances that one may find minorities in advertising are still slim compared to the number of times one can find a Caucasian in ads, after researching a wide array of publications and mediums, I think we have reason to be optimistic in that the media is slowly but surely moving in a more progressive direction and at least PICTURING minorities, which was a non-existent practice just a couple of decades ago. There are always things that can be done to improve the way messages are relayed. This is exactly why being able to both recognize the problems at hand, and THEN coming up with possible solutions is a fantastic capability to be equipped with. Further, I think it's detrimental to take on the attitude that things are never going to change anyway...I believe it’s our job to start coming up with those solutions.

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