2017 has been a pretty tumultuous year for marketing to communities of colour. When we were presented with the catastrophic Pepsi and Shea Moisture campaigns back in April, we thought it was all over. But despite the shaky start, the year has presented a number of industry-defining moments that point to a more optimistic and inclusive future of advertising. And now in what seems like an interesting way to finish off the year, we’ve been presented with the most mixed-race Christmas in British advertising history.
First and foremost, as a mixed-race woman working in advertising, the vast number of Christmas ads this year featuring happy scenes of multiracial couples and families has left me shook, and I’m feeling optimistic. Some of the biggest UK brands did away with the traditional all-white Christmas this year to instead embrace romantic scenes of multiracial couples dancing in the snow: Apple’s “Sway” for Airpods, Euan McGreggor-narrated adaptations of Cinderella and her black prince for Debenhams, and heroing young black and mixed-race children in a feat of Christmas storytelling (hurrah Morrisons, John Lewis, M&S and H&M).
We are still battling with the effects of advertising’s long history of normalising white beauty standards. Although in recent years there has been notably more representation of POCs in ads and communications, brands and agencies continue to sway predominantly towards lighter-skinned actors and models when it comes to casting. Mixed-race women are popping up in beauty ads left, right and centre, but we are still waiting on greater representation of dark-skinned black women in advertising across the board. So, whilst I feel visually accounted for as a person of mixed Antiguan and white British heritage, the industry’s understanding and representation of the British “modern” family could do with broadening their horizons to be more inclusive of British families of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black, and East-Asian origin.
Advertising plays an important role in shaping the way we see ourselves written into the mainstream narrative. Ads like the ones we’ve seen this Christmas are important for ensuring that younger children of colour, like my nine-year old sister, can see themselves represented, and their existence normalised, in popular culture, where I as a child did not.
Growing up in a split family in the multicultural city of Leicester, my identity was shaped by a world that was predominantly black or white. To see a mixed-race family in an ad was a rarity, to see a woman of colour in a hair or beauty ad even rarer. Now, we are seeing progress in the way that brands and agencies are diversifying their creative content, but there is still much more to be done. Thankfully, the continued emergence of creative spaces of colour and agencies like Looks Like Me are helping to push the boundaries and reshape the way advertising agencies cast and represent POCs in communications. Fairy-tale depictions of families of colour whilst heart-warming, should not exclusively be reserved for Christmas.
http://nu.gal-dem.com/merry-mixed-race-christmas-a-review/
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