C.J.MOERDYK

Marketing & Media Consultant

Fellow of the Institute of Marketing Management

PO Box 115, Gallo Manor, Sandton,2052

November 6/7, 2001

Submitted by Christopher James Moerdyk, an independent marketing and media consultant and freelance media and marketing commentator.

There are three areas in which racism is being practised in South Africa's marketing, advertising and media industries.

1. The way in which the country's mass media markets itself and the media research process they support is unquestionably racist.

2. The lack of will by the advertising industry to accelerate the development of blacks is frankly, nothing more than self-centred lethargy. But, in some cases, making it more difficult for blacks and easier for whites to get a foot in the industry door is, however, racism of the worst kind.

3. White media buyers are forced to resort to racism by having little alternative but to use racist research tools to select media in which to place advertising. But, when many young and unskilled media buyers employ personal preference rather than marketing intelligence to support "white" rather than "black" programmes with advertising it is difficult not to call this practice racist. But more often than not, their clients are to blame for what often looks like decidedly racist decision making on the placement of advertising.

1. THE MASS MEDIA AND RACISM.

The biggest culprits in terms of perpetuating racism in these industries, are the mass media. This is neither intentional, nor inherent bigotry, but simply naiveté and a lack of understanding of marketing. Our media has an obsession with racial differences, making these hard and fast rules instead of treating them as the rare marketing exceptions they are. This is highlighted in mainstream media research which is owned, funded and operated by the country's leading media owners and marketers. In essence, all research produced to help guide advertisers to media that can best promote their products, is based on the general premise that "Whites, Coloureds and Indian" consumers are different to "Black" consumers. There is no word other than "racism" for this practice which makes no marketing sense whatsoever.

/And as long as….

And as long as this form of entrenched, research-based discrimination is perpetuated, South Africa will continue to have media that is marketed on the numbers of blacks, or alternatively, Whites, Coloureds and Indians they attract.

We will continue to have editors; liberal editors; editors who were part of the struggle; editors who by no means could be called racist, but nonetheless editors who day and in and day out boast about how many "black" or "white" readers, listeners or viewers, they have.

And we will continue to have advertising buyers who, because the research tools they are given to work with, will carry on making a distinction between Whites, Coloureds and Indians on one hand and Blacks on the other.

This ludicrous situation continues to exist simply because the media industry in South Africa has been unable to adapt to a new order and has found it difficult to cast off the shackles of apartheid. It is not as easy as simply throwing away "Whites Only" signboards. It involves massive mind set changes, huge paradigm shifts and in many cases dispensing with popular brands. It is by no means impossible. It is just that the media has not yet realised that they are the cancer – the root cause of the problem.

Just how did this happen? At the height of the apartheid era, media and marketing were simple disciplines. White people who had money, power and influence all lived in specific, identifiable, areas. Blacks, on the other hand, who had nothing, were conveniently lumped together in townships.

As a result, newspapers and magazines particularly, were created to target specific race groups – upmarket, affluent whites on one hand and mass market urban blacks on the other. Add to this a media that was regulated in terms of competition and it was a simple matter to decide where one should place one's advertising.

Today, those same newspapers and magazines exist. But now, there is far more competition for the advertising pie and formerly "white" newspapers, for reasons of political correctness mainly and partly because of pressure from advertising agencies and media buyers, are desperately trying to prove that they are also read by affluent" blacks." At the same time, they do not understand in their naiveté that there is actually no difference between affluent blacks and affluent whites. Just as there is no difference really between poor black and poor whites.

Meanwhile, for decades now, astute marketers in South Africa, have long since paid no heed to whether target markets are black or white.

An example of this is BMW South Africa. More than a decade ago, before apartheid had been abolished, I asked the marketing director of BMW SA how many black customers they had. And how many female customers.

His response was an incredulous; " we have no idea and we don't really care."

Because, like many other companies in South Africa BMW understands that the main motivations in marketing are aspiration and desire.

BMW's advertising and marketing strategy simply targets people who (a) have money and (b) aspire to own a BMW. They have found that aspiration and desire is common to men and women as well as black, white, yellow and brown race groups.

Of course there are exceptions. White people don’t generally buy skin lightening creams and black people might not buy sun tan lotion, but these are rare exceptions.

However, our media industry, mainly through its research and marketing, has decided to turn this exception into an all encompassing rule.

It confuses racial difference with aspirational difference.

Not only do newspapers and magazines continue to perpetuate what can only be described as a decidedly racist method of marketing, but so do television stations.

/They are equally..

They are equally adept at pointing out how many white, coloured and Indian viewers they have on one hand and how many blacks on the other.

SABC 1, a number of years ago persisted in positioning itself to appeal to "young, black people between the ages of 25 and 35."

The channel insisted on carrying programmes it assumed would appeal to young black adults. They assumed young black adults liked to see programmes featuring young black adults as well as advertising featuring young black adults.

In 1997, when I presented a series on advertising on TV 1, the programme executive requested that I include some advertisements " that would appeal to our young black audience. "

Their idea of what would appeal to this audience was simply an advertisement that featured a young black person doing something that appealed to young black people.

As an exercise, we chose two commercials. One featured a young, dreadlocked, black youth in an amusing advertisement in which he wrongly assumed that an overweight white man was trying to push his Porche over a cliff when in fact he was just doing stretching exercises against it. The young black pushed the car over the cliff.

Another ad featured a young, aggressive, tattooed white man eating a pizza and liberally sprinkling it with Tabasco sauce. When bitten by a mosquito the insect flew off and exploded.

SABC 1 executives were convinced that their "young black" market would identify with the dreadlocked youngster pushing the car over the cliff ( getting back at the rich whites) and would not like the Tabasco ad because the actor in it looked like a white, racist bully.

Our research showed quite the opposite. Every single one of the 300 young black youths we spoke to who saw the programme ,loved the pizza ad and thought the Porche commercial was only mildly funny.

When we questioned them about racism or retribution elements of the ads they looked at us as though we were quite mad. What appealed to them was exactly what would have appealed to any youngster regardless of his or her skin colour.

Over the years I have come across myriad examples of how blacks and whites do not differ. I have many black colleagues with whom I share far more aspirations and desires than some white people I know.

I know many black people who don't just read black newspapers and watch black language news on television.

Ask Zwelakhe Sisulu what his favourite television programme is and it is not a black programme but a series in Afrikaans, featuring white people called "Orkney Snork Nie."

There is no question that the media in South Africa have been the least able to adapt to a non-racial order. And if racism is to be obliterated from the media, the industry has to take a massive leap of faith and eliminate race from its research and its editorial columns.

The problem is, that with most mass media in this country fighting for survival, this leap of faith is just too great for many media owners and marketers to contemplate. South Africa's media industry, that is relatively inexperienced in this real competitive new world we live in, is certainly not known for its entrepreneurial leadership, but rather seems content to just keep doing things conservatively and safely. Few buy in to the modern business dictum of "the only risk is not taking one"

/2. The second….

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2. The second area in which racism exists in this country is in the field of human resources development.

Here it is the advertising industry that has not been able to adapt to a new order. Nor has it been able to really grasp the enormous benefit of including all 43 million South Africans in what it does.

The advertising industry has all manner of noble intentions and charters designed to level playing fields and entice black people into its exclusive fold. But unfortunately it seems to have absolutely no will to get on with the job of implementation.

The industry is still extremely white, despite the fact that many of the larger agencies have development programmes. The process is simply not happening fast enough and apart from a few exceptions many of these attempts are nothing more than tokenism.

This somewhat half-hearted attempt to bring blacks into the industry is by no means the fault of white players in the industry. Black executives in the ad industry are mostly also paying lip service to development and transformation. An organisation called Café that was created by black advertising people to help develop young black talent has frankly not achieved much at all. A lot of talk, a lot of good intentions but very little action. One of its founders, Sipho Luthuli, really tried extremely hard to do the right thing. He eventually left the industry out of frustration with the lack of support he received.

Some two years ago, when I was editor of the Media & Marketing section in the Independent Newspapers' Saturday editions, I entered into negotiations with Cafe to have some of their students work with us to give them the opportunity to understand the media environment.

This programme was enthusiastically accepted by Café but it didn't get past first base through simple lack of will on the part of Café to make it work.

Equally, earlier this year I tested the will of Café by suggesting to a young black marketing student that he contact Café to find out whether they could help him.

Despite my personal intervention over a period of out three months, senior Café office bearers simply didn't bother to accept his telephone calls.

Another example of lack of will from the ad industry, is illustrated by the experience of Jimmy Ngwenya.

A young black man of 28 who has a good matric and who worked at all manner of menial jobs to put himself through three years of a communications and marketing diploma at one of the top commercial colleges in Johannesburg. He passed all his exams with flying colours and I got to know of him when he contacted me for help during his final year. I became his mentor and have subsequently been assisting him in finding a job.

I put his CV up on the Marketingweb website which reaches probably 80% of the marketing and advertising community. The request was for someone to give Jimmy a chance to prove himself. There were only three responses of which only one ended up in an interview.

One of SA 's leading ad agencies offered Jimmy a bursary to the Association of Advertising Agencies' school of advertising. He was turned down on the basis that he did not have a university degree. Whether this is AAA policy or not is beside the point. This is what Jimmy was told and I have no reason to disbelieve him.

/In essence….

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In essence what is happening is that a young black man like Jimmy is being told that to get into the ad industry he first needs to have a three year university degree and then needs to spend another three years at an advertising school before he can even think of getting a job. Six years of academic training!

In the meantime, I have evidence of heaven knows how many young white men and women who get jobs in the ad industry without any degrees, without any advertising school diplomas. Only a week ago a happy mother of a young white woman in her early twenties told me that she was so delighted that her daughter, who had been working in the travel industry, had now got a job in advertising!

I simply do not believe these are isolated cases. I believe this is inherent discrimination against young blacks who are not given nearly the same opportunities to enter the industry their young white counterparts.

Statistics show that the advertising industry is still lily white. A lot of people in the industry point at the number of young blacks attending advertising schools and suggest that " we all wait for this to filter through into the industry."

But, the problem is that very few young blacks manage to get a foothold into the industry without having either lots of money backing them, university degrees or some other sort of training. Unlike a lot of whites.

The advertising industry needs to create far more ambitious programmes particularly to develop raw talent and to start putting this talent to work without insisting on years and years of expensive advertising education.

In a nutshell, while young whites are managing to get job interviews, young blacks aren't able to have their telephone calls answered. What is that, other than racism?

The same problem exists in the media industry. Those very editors who had no formal tertiary education themselves, are insisting that anyone wanting to become a journalist has to first have a relevant university degree. I am not convinced that this is so much an attempt to sort the wheat from the chaff as a feeble excuse not to have to get embroiled in lengthy interview processes.

Young talent is not going to be developed as long as bureaucratic barriers are kept in place. As it is, very few media groups are seriously doing any training at grass roots level.

The example of black journalist, Abbey Makoe is, I believe, typical of what is still happening in our media industry.

In the late 1980's a young and inexperienced Abbey Makoe persistently called in at The Star to offer his service as a "runner" to go in to the townships and dig for background information for various members of the editorial staff of the Star.

Abbey wanted to become a journalist and having proved he was able to source information, asked me and some of my colleagues to help him. His first attempt at writing a news story was unreadable.

He persevered and badgered and eventually those of us who would spare him a few minutes every now and then, started to see considerable talent and suggested he be allowed into what was the Argus Cadet School for journalists.

His application was turned down.

Eventually, through dogged persistence Abbey Makoe got his foot in the door as the most junior of freelance reporters. Then came a permanent job and today he is probably one of the most talented black newspapermen in the country.

The problem is that for every ten thousand equally talented young writers, there is only a single Abbey Makoe who has the perseverance, the humility and the strength to put up with continuous rejection.

/South Africa has…

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South Africa has thousands of Abbey Makoe's who would be valuable members of the community of journalists in this country. The only problem is that no media owners have the infrastructure or frankly the will, to put into place programmes to unearth this rich talent.

Does this amount to racism? In a way it does, because had Abbey Makoe been white he would, with that same level of perseverance, have achieved his goal in half the time. Because he was black he simply had to work harder to prove himself Today is not all that different.

3. The third area of racism in the ad industry concerns that very debate raised by Mr Nat Kenana which sparked by a series of articles on the Marketingweb website. try.

This is the issue of white media buyers not supporting black television programmes and other media.

It all started at a meeting my colleague, John Farquhar and I had with executives of the SABC's television marketing arm Action Stations. They wanted to know why it was that, given the huge success of the TV programme Yizo-Yizo, media buyers and ad agencies were not supporting this with advertising.

Since then an enormous amount of invective has flown back and forth and no-one within the industry or outside of it has been able to explain what is going on.

Quite simply I believe that the culprits, with the regard to this issue, are once again the media owners, marketers and racist research techniques.

There is no question that media research as is currently available in South Africa is sorely lacking. This same research that insists on segregating the local consumer market into Whites, Coloured and Indians on one side and Blacks on the other, is now considered by many players in the industry to be inefficient. The All Media Products Survey is past its sell by date and that futile attempt to take racism out of the equation, LSM's or Lifestyle Measurement Survey, has also just about lost all credibility.

In essence, the problem has been caused by suspect research telling media owners and advertisers what South Africans are buying but have not told them why South Africans are buying those products.

Research is so bad that statistics on Radio listenership, for example, have been known to have had margins of error of 45% ! And this is what media buyers are treating as their cast-in-concrete bibles.

So, those entrusted with buying advertising are having to rely on research that isn't really telling them much and which is based on openly segregating blacks and whites.

On top of which, the entire media and marketing industry tends to approach everything from the point of view of sheer numbers of black and white consumers.

Add to this the fact that the skills level of many media buyers are sorely lacking and it is no wonder that this industry is labelled racist.

Another problem that arises when one is not sufficiently trained in the art of buying advertising space or airtime, is that personal preference becomes a considerable motivating factor. Young white media buyers who only listen to white radio stations or watch white television programmes, have no experience of the value of black programmes. So much easier to choose the familiar over the dark unknown.

But another culprit here is the marketer. The client of those advertising agencies. Here again the skills level is painfully lacking and it is no secret that the level of professionalism and experience among the country's brand and product managers is particularly low.

/With the result….

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With the result that decisions are often a question of taking the line of least resistance. Of sticking with comfort zones. Marketers, brand and product managers seem to want to ride with the herd and here again, personal preference plays an enormous role.

South Africa's most popular radio station in terms of advertising support is 94,7 Highveld Stereo. Its morning show attracts more advertising revenue than any other radio station including those national African language stations with far, far bigger audiences and spending power.

I do not for a minute, want to take away from 94,7 its success, but it has always intrigued me that very few media buyers admit to recommending this station to their clients. Rather it is the other way round. Clients all insist on having their radio ads flighted on 94,7. Which suggests to me that , again while the station might well have huge pulling power, a lot of these marketers only want their ads on this station because they want to personally hear their ads. Not only that, but they want all their friends and families to hear the ads. Hardly sound marketing. But probably not overt racism either although there is some of that in there somewhere. Rather just incredibly inept and self serving marketing.

So, just as those naïve editors continue to promote and gloat about the number of black or white readers they have, so too are media buyers naively pandering to skin colour when placing advertising.

I have been accused of defending these people by saying that they are not racist. Well, if one understands racism to be actual hatred by one person of another because of the colour of that person's skin, then these people are not racist. I have no evidence in the media buying industry of any white buyers who "hate" blacks and who refuse to support black media or programmes because of a any hatred.

Another aspect of this issue is the advertising and media industries obsession with sheer numbers when deciding where advertising should be placed.

I have experiences of the same media buyers who complain to some media owners that they are "not delivering enough numbers to justify our advertising" then telling others "your numbers are too high and therefore your advertising space is too expensive for us."

While one might not be able to accuse media buyers of rampant racism, one can certainly accuse them of stupid and muddled thinking and double standards.

4. CONCLUSION

Is there racism is the advertising and media industries? Unquestionably there is. The main culprit is the mass media with its obsession for continually wanting to define its target markets by skin colour. Marketers join the media as culprits in perpetuating racism by supporting and funding media research that insists that whites, coloureds and Indians are different to blacks. The advertising industry is equally racist in discriminating against blacks both through absolute idleness in terms expediting the development process quickly enough and for making it a lot easier for whites than blacks to get a foot in the door.

The brain drain has had an enormous effect on SA's media industry, leaving it ill-equipped in terms of any significant transformation.

RACISM WILL NOT DISAPPEAR FROM SA's MEDIA UNTIL RACE DOES.

/The solution….

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5 THE SOLUTION

It would, in my opinion, be premature to resort to legislation to solve the problem of racism in the media, marketing and advertising industries. It would also be naïve to believe that these industries are capable of solving this problem themselves. They are too preoccupied with survival and massive competition to apply themselves to the task. Equally these industries are so fraught with political one-upmanship and personal agendas, that it would take forever to get all the main stakeholders to sit down and agree on some form of action.

But, I do believe the problem is serious enough for parliament to take an interest in the form of a task group appointed by and responsible to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communication. A task group made up of independent specialists not directly employed by any of these industries, to establish guidelines and best practice.

There are certainly any number of people who are now retired from these industries who would be extremely capable of guiding the process.