How Advertisements Market to Certain Races

        It is no surprise that corporations and companies do surveys to see who is buying their products.  These surveys are then used to target certain audiences, including targeting certain races.  Bell Hooks states this in her essay Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance,

“One area where the politics of diversity and its concomitant insistence on inclusive representation have had series impact is advertising.  Now that sophisticated market surveys reveal the extent to which poor and materially under-privilege people of all races/ethnicities consume products, sometimes in a quantity disproportionate to income, it has become more evident that these markets can be appealed to with advertising.” (Hook, 371)

When one thinks from the point of view of a corporation or company it makes sense that we would use the marketing survey’s to know which audiences to target. Like Hooks said a huge factor in who buys what product is due to ones economic stance.  For example, many fast food companies such as McDonald’s, and soda products such as Pepsi, target African Americans, and especially African American children.  We will look at both of these companies and their advertisements that they have targeting African Americans.

            In Herbert Marcuse’s book One-Dimensional Man during chapter 1 he looks closely at what it is that causes us to buy products, he states that there are “human needs” (Marcuse, 75) that have always been required to be met.  It helps to view human needs as a pyramid; each need in the pyramid must be met, like food, in order to move to the next category of fulfilling a need.  Marcuse also states that many of these human needs are “false needs,” (Marcuse, 76) “Most of the prevailing needs to relax, to have fun, to behave and consume in accordance with the advertisements, to love and hate what others love and hate, belong to this category of false needs.” (Marcuse, 76) Advertisements use videos or images to play up to their audiences, they make them see themselves in the advertisements and in turn it makes them realize that either they will be happy if they have this product or they will not be fulfilled if they do not have the product.  Society and advertisements make people believe that these needs are true and that they need to have these products to satisfy themselves. “No matter how much such needs may have become the individual’s own, reproduced and fortified by the conditions of his existence; no matter how much he identifies himself with them and find himself in their satisfaction, they continue to be what they were from the beginning – products of a society whose dominant interest demands repression.” (Marcuse, 76) Children are especially acceptable to these advertisements, because at a young age they do not realize that items may not really improve their lives as much as the advertisements lead on.  For children, they see a happy child like themselves in an advertisement and they believe that that is how they will be if they have that product.

            

          The first advertisement that we will look at is Pepsi. During the time that these advertisements came out the slogan that they were using was “now it’s Pepsi-for those who think young.” The image depicts a young boy with a toy plane and a father looking lovely down at his son.  The idea that a child would get by this advertisement is that by having a Pepsi it would allow for them to have a quality bonding time with their father or family member.  This advertisement also play to targeting adults to let them see that if they have a Pepsi then they will be able to act young again. 

            In the McDonalds advertisement we also see a father and son having a good time together.  The two are eating McDonald and spending quality time together.  This advertisement, like that of the Pepsi advertisement, makes it seem to it’s consumers that if they go to McDonald’s then they too will have a great time together.  When we read what the advertisement says we all see how they make it seem like McDonalds is a high-end place by talking about its French fries saying, “They’re made from the finest potatoes and prepared just right.” This lets it’s consumers believe that it is getting something of high quality.

            It has been studied and shown in surveys on obesity rate in children that African American children tend to fall into the obese category more than other races.  One has to wonder if advertisements from fast food and soda companies play a part in this.  It is understandable that advertisers and companies want to target to their audiences that buy from them and in a sense it is good to see oneself depicted in the characters of advertisements.  However, if this is a factor in African American children being obese more often, then one has to wonder the risk that is to market heavily to one group.

Work Cited

Hooks, Bell. Eating the Other; Desire and Resistance

 Herbert. Marcus (2008). One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press.