BrainTrust Query: Do African Americans require a targeted marketing approach?
Pepper Miller, expert on marketing to African Americans and author of What's Black About It?, recently presented the results of the largest African American marketing study conducted to date.
The study was commissioned by Radio One (the largest U.S. radio broadcasting company targeting Black Americans) and conducted by Yankelovich. It consisted of 3,400 interviews among African Americans ages 13-to-74.
Highlights of the study include:
- Most African Americans have a preference about how they are described. Forty-two percent indicated they prefer to be called Black and 44 percent said they preferred African American. Higher income respondents were more likely to prefer the term Black.
- About half of respondents are likely to have mostly Black friends or interact mostly with Blacks at school and work. Yet, only three-in-10 prefer being around people of the same race.
- A quarter indicated that they have personally been discriminated against in the past three months. Eighty-two percent believe it is "important for parents to prepare their children for prejudice."
- African Americans are more than twice as likely to trust Black media as they are to trust the mainstream media. About 30 percent "really trust" Black media compared to only 13 percent who said the same about mainstream media.
- Eight-in-10 households watch Black television channels at least once a week. Of all television time, a third is spent on "select" Black channels.
- The Digital Divide no longer exists. Sixty-eight percent of African Americans are online, compared to 71 percent of all Americans (PEW, March, 2007). Among African American teens, over 90 percent are online.
- The second most important persuader in an advertisement is an ad that sends a "positive message" to the Black community. Rated first were ads that show the benefit of a product.
Discussion Question: Do African Americans require a targeted marketing approach?
[Author's commentary] In January, 2008, Senator Barack Obama had a ten-to-twelve point lead over Senator Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire presidential primary polls, yet he lost the vote by three points. For weeks, the pundits debated whether the polling error was due to the so-called "Bradley Effect," named for former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, an African American politician whose lead in polls dried up at the ballot box, and the "Wilder Effect," whose namesake, another African American man, saw his ten point advantage vanish as Virginians cast their ballots for governor in 1989. The question was: Would whites lie when polled and then turn around and do the exact opposite at the ballot box?
The fact that Senator Obama is now the presumed Democratic nominee demonstrates that yes, America, or at least the Democratic Party, is ready for an African American president. Still, in many ways, we Americans live in two worlds: one of them black, the other white.
Unlike Hispanics, nearly all Blacks (including African and Caribbean immigrants) speak English. But their tastes, their media habits, their overall outlook is different than that of whites. Most importantly, African Americans have a strong racial and cultural identity. They notice when they are being spoken to, and when they are not being acknowledged. For that reason, in order to effectively reach them, a targeted marketing approach is a fundamental part of any good marketing program.