The advertising industry, so painfully obsessed with ‘diversity’ in TV commercials, has been publicly criticised for a lack of diversity in TV commercials. We’ve been here before. But this time, everyone in advertising will be delighted about the criticism.
They – we – all know that for many years, there’s been an unrealistic overrepresentation of black people in TV ads. Well, this has now been measured, proved and published in a report commissioned for Channel 4.
It asserts that while black people account for around 4 per cent of the UK population they appear in more than 50 per cent of commercials.
But because of the terror of somehow appearing racist in a business addicted to the vanity of virtue, nobody had the courage to do anything about it. Well, now this report has done it for them and they’ll all breathe a sigh of relief.
But here’s the clever bit, the report ensures that they’ll never have to mention the over-representation of anyone, just the under-representation of certain sectors of society. It points out that the over 70s, despite making up 15 per cent of the population, only feature in 2 per cent of ads. Pregnant women are seldom seen either and anyone with a visible disability is usually kept well away from the cameras.
And this is how the forthcoming shift will be spun. ‘We need to present a more truthful representation of the UK population so we’ll be showing more elderly people, more pregnant women and more people with disabilities.’ What they won’t say is ‘And we’ll be showing more white people’ but that’s what’s going to happen.
Perhaps it’s a necessary and overdue correction. Ads are supposed to be ‘legal, decent, honest and truthful’ but given that around 80 per cent of people in the UK are white, they’ve probably been failing on the last two counts.
So what? Who cares? Well, admittedly, it wasn’t a serious problem but it was starting to become one. The preponderance of non-white faces in TV ads was giving a false impression of how many non-white people there are in the UK. This in turn, fuelled the fulminations of the far right.
I’ve worked in a lot of international ad campaigns and advertisers in other European countries are baffled by this. In the EU, they’re not quite as, shall we say, ‘open minded’ as we are in the UK and you’ll see this reflected in the demographics of their TV commercials.
In the light of the Channel 4 report, Jack Thorne, esteemed TV screenwriter, has called for a period of ‘self-examination’ from the advertising industry. He alludes to the near invisibility in ads of older people and those with disabilities. Fair enough but how about the TV industry? Haven’t their casting choices also been misleading and unfair?
A few years ago, I was working with a black actor who was bemoaning the way black actors were treated by the BBC. He said they were invariably cast as the good guys and perhaps, if they were lucky, as loveable rogues. And yet, as he pointed out, the best parts for an actor are often those of thoroughly nasty characters. These plum roles are usually given to white actors. So in their zeal to be seen as enlightened and progressive, white programme makers were keeping black people down in the workplace.
The Channel 4 report, whether it meant to or not, will now allow advertisers to reset their casting criteria. From now on, we’ll almost certainly see more disabled people, more pregnant people and more elderly people in TV ads. Quite right too, especially as so much spending power is retained by the over 60s.
Statements will be issued and ‘lessons learnt’ and we’ll hear something about ‘truth being at the heart of all advertising’ and wanting to present an honest, vibrant and diverse picture of the UK population.
Great but, as anyone could have told them, this is what they should have been doing all along.
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