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Proctor and Gamble, Connecting with African American women?
November 20, 2007 · 1 Comment
From “Advertising Age”
By Jeff Neff
“Najoh Tita Reid has one of those classic childhood stories from when she was 4 or 5. One of her white friends wouldn’t let her white doll play with Ms. Reid’s black doll, which she termed “ugly.”
Then her friend pointed out the doll’s resemblance to Ms. Reid, who went home crying. Her mom, after reassuring Ms. Reid, also got her some Essence and Ebony magazines and put up a “Black Is Beautiful” poster in her bathroom. “This being the 1970s,” Ms. Reid said, “it wasn’t hard to find.”
But unlike most people, Ms. Reid, now 34, is in a position to do much more than that. She’s multicultural marketing director for the world’s and country’s biggest advertiser, Procter & Gamble Co. And she’s convinced P&G to start putting its considerable marketing heft — “scale marketing” as they say at the Cincinnati headquarters — behind a new multibrand campaign called “My Black Is Beautiful.”
Forging bonds
The campaign’s goal is to make all black girls and women feel that way regardless of skin tone or origin and, of course, forge a closer relationship between P&G brands and their black consumers in the process.
The campaign obviously bears some resemblance to the idea behind a globally lauded effort by one of P&G beauty’s key competitors, Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” from Unilever. The formula for both: Find a group that feels slighted by popular culture, then position your brand(s) squarely on their side.”
So, in checking out the website for “My Black is Beautiful,” you are greeted with a video of the “manifesto” (http://www.myblackisbeautiful.com/images2/content/mbib-manifesto.pdf), recorded by African American women of different ages. Other than the refrain “my Black is beautiful,” the one line that stood out IMMEDIATELY to me was “Whether natural from inside, or skillfully applied.” What?
Exploring further, I stumbled across their “gallery,” a collection of photos and videos from the BET awards. I think I will need to write an entirely different blog entry about how strongly BET does NOT align with the agenda of empowering Black women.
There is a downloadable guide for starting conversations in your community about how women of color are portrayed in the media. I totally support this effort, but the lack of resources put behind it is apparent in that I have been unable to find any coverage not directly related to advertising and marketing magazines and websites. There is also an invitation to join the “movement” or “conversation” with no message boards, forum, or even link to contacting. How effectively can you build a movement without providing forums to bring people together?
I completely support the idea behind this “campaign,” but I would welcome other people’s ideas on how to more effectively engage the tools being presented here in a way that does not directly support the idea of needing to buy beauty products (like Pantene’s “relaxed and natural”) and that actually brings people together in conversation.
Categories: Commentary