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The second you get home from an exhausting day at school, its awfulness magnified by your nagging math teacher or pop quizzes in your English class, you flop down on the couch to finally relax and aimlessly reach for the remote on your end table. When you finally hit the power button, you don't hear the catchy beat of your favorite music video, instead you’re bombarded with the flashy images of ethnically diverse women, modeling for the latest Dove commercial.
As your eyes glaze over the TV in a consumptive trance, a collage of various ethnic representations works overtime on the screen in a desperate attempt sell you anything and everything. That’s because current marketing strategists are utilizing diversity as an advertising tactic. The slick strategy aims for consumers to identify with at least one person in a commercial or brochure, thus allowing the advertisement to appeal to not just one demographic, but all demographics. “Advertisers hoping to attract diverse groups of consumers must build relationships with them by understanding the values and multiple identities with which they identify,” Diversity in Advertising: Broadening the Scope of Research Directions author Curtis Haugtvedt said.
Marketing strategists argue that diversity within advertising is a benchmark of how far we, as a society, have progressed from our historic reputation of racism and sexism. However, when a collage of foreign faces is so blatantly forced upon consumers, it is not so much a reference point as it is simply a marketing tool.
With niche marketing — an advertising tactic based on satisfying specific demographic needs — taking off, high school students are not the only targets for diversity advertising. For example, recently Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty stirred hot debate among talking heads as they “attempt to use models (each representing an ethnic group) that look more like real women than waifs,” according to advertising agency The Next Wave (www.thenextwave.biz). The campaign’s niche marketing was also criticized for hypocrisy as Dove, promoter of “real beauty,” is owned by the same company as grooming product Axe, promoter of masculine sex appeal, demonstrating the great lengths to bait consumers into buying their product.
This niche strategy has also plagued military recruitments, which targets the most easily persuaded demographic — high school students. As a marketing tool used among consumer advertisements, it may be harmless; however, military recruiters should think cautiously when applying it to draw students into the armed services. Besides trying to convince students to join the military through glossy army pamphlets donned with familiar ethnic faces, military recruiters have infiltrated the school system by distributing the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test, a military entrance exam. And because federally funded high schools are required by former President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 to give military recruiters access to the campus, recruiters can claim to administer the test as a public service, helping students become aware of potential career fields, but more specifically the armed services. The test entails all students to register their personal information, which is shared with local military recruiters. However, according to The Washington Post, new legislation passed on April 15 means that schools in Maryland are not required to forward test results to military recruiters. California should consider adopting this legislation, making high school students a less vulnerable demographic.
Recent marketing strategists exploit diversity for financial gain. They are not sincerely and naturally celebrating a wide range of cultures, as they would like their consumers to perceive. More specifically, military recruiters should not sink into the deceitful practices of advertising. The next time you are at Target’s grooming aisle opting for a bottle of Dove body wash, the company will be laughing all the way to the bank.
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