Advertising in the post-racist era

Yeah, I know we're not there yet. Racism is alive and well all over the world. But I'm still seeing signs of an evolved view of our differences. This viral ad is one of them:



Created by video commandos Rhett and Link, this ad is for real. And it's awesome. I'll tell you why.

My personal ideal regarding racism is that within my lifetime it will be normal to ignore the physical differences between people that we call "race" (as opposed to cultural differences, which are a whole other ball of wax). The categories we have put people into since colonial times are useless and arbitrary. It's time to move on.

But coming to the end of an extremely racist 500 years or so, we can't just pretend the problem isn't there. That's where satire comes in.

For example, way back in 2000, the satirical newspaper/web site The Onion ran a hilarious article titled "Black Guy Photoshopped In". It was funny because this kind of thing really happens. In fact, around the same time the University of Wisconsin at Madison was caught doing exactly that:



This issue is also close to my heart as a Creative Director who works on lots of government and other "politically correct" accounts. Casting models and actors for ads is one of the most uncomfortable things we do, because we spend hours planning out the visible ethnic makeup of people. As my colleague Christopher commented, "we spend so much time thinking about the very thing we don't think we should be thinking about".

You can see some of our solutions in our ads. For example, for Public Safety Canada, we portrayed a multigenerational family with a black mom, white dad, black son, and white grandma. While this was a contrived scenario, what made me feel good about it was that nobody seemed to notice the diversity. That's exactly what we were aiming for. (The fireman has an Asian look, too, in case you didn't notice.)

Another one is our HRSDC "baby" commercial for federal education savings plans. When we had to provide the casting director with notes for ethnicity, we said "Mediterranean". The idea was that if we got a bunch of olive-skinned, ethnically ambiguous actors who looked like a family, we were avoiding the problem of identifying a single nationality. For your reference, mom is Egyptian, the baby is French Canadian, and he grows up Italian. Will wonders never cease! Once again, neither focus groups nor public audiences commented on ethnicity. Considering that Toronto groups are infamous for critiquing the diversity of illustrated storyboards, this was a real win.

Diversity is important, and our job as advertisers is to normalize a more diverse Canada without looking fake. To remind ourselves to be conscious of the fine line we tread (and to avoid Onioning ourselves like UWM did) I created this demotivational poster for my office:

A Message From The Government of Canada

Today I'm supposed to speak to a class at Algonquin College about "writing for television".

Now, I've worked on quite a few TV spots over the years, and I've learned quite a bit. But most of it is really "how to write a 30-second spot that fits within a competitive budget and government policies and still not have it suck".

This is not meant as any slight to the clients. They're working under the same constraints, which are forced upon them by political realities and the extra scrutiny the public turns on when they see an ad they've paid for in taxes. Our best government clients act more like partners, working with us to navigate the barriers and pitfalls throughout the process.

Working together, we manage to create good work. Just last month, our campaign for Public Safety Canada's 72 Hours Emergency Preparedness packed a good amount of information, drama, and motivation into 27.5 seconds (leaving the mandatory 2.5 second "A Message From The Government of Canada" tag).

How we got there was an exercise in knowing our client's internal audiences as well as we know the public ones.

Budget

On every government job, we have to write a detailed proposal outlining our skills, experience, approach, and budget. Even if we don't go with the spec concept pitched, we are usually tied to those numbers.

Since talent tends to be our biggest production cost consideration on a national campaign, we try to keep it minimal. No casts of thousands for us.

Language

All Canadian government advertising has to be equally effective in English and French. No hiring separate agencies to regionalize the message; we need an almost identical spot. Most times, this (as well as budget) means we end up shooting a silent spot with voiceover added in post. This has become even more common now that many of our spots get dubbed into multiple "ethnic" languages. (LGT a CFIA spot we did, coincidentally, with the same Quebec Director as 72 Hours.)

Inclusivity

We must always represent "all Canadians". This means showing representatives of lots of visibly different populations within Canada. If we're casting an unrelated group, the challenge is just to make the mix not looked contrived. In a family situation, however, we have two choices: show a family of mixed origins (as in the 72 Hours spot); or else cast people who are more ethnically ambiguous ("Mediterranean" is a popular catch-all.)

Beyond ethnic inclusivity, we also have to consider age, income, region... within the most targetted audience, there can still be a fair amount of diversity. So we usually shoot for averages.

Focus Groups and Committees

Finally, our work is scrutinized by two rounds of focus groups across Canada, as well as two or three high-level decision-making groups within government who we never get to meet directly. We have to anticipate the objectives of policy-makers, as well as the subjectivity of members of the public willing to give up their evening for fifty bucks and a stale sandwich.

And yet somehow, we do it. I guess all agencies have similar challenges with other sectors. Our particular constraints would probably frustrate a consumer agency... but at the end of the day it's just nice to get our work on TV. Plus, we actually might help some people.