Placing More Minorities in Ads Turns Out to Be Hard Sale

With famous actors like Bill Cosby, Pat Morita and Ricardo Montalban on television pitching everything from brokerages to toothpaste, it seems that minorities have become all the rage on Madison Avenue these days.

The ubiquitous Cosby is the most convincing pitchman on TV, according to surveys conducted by Video Storyboard Tests, a New York-based research firm. And one-time Chrysler pitchman Montalban, a Latino, and Morita, a Japanese-American who starred in “Karate Kid” and now promotes Colgate toothpaste, have also enjoyed wide visibility.

Such celebrities may make it appear that minorities are enjoying wider acceptance in advertising. But a Screen Actors Guild survey suggests that the drive to improve racial and ethnic diversity in advertising has stalled.

The report, published last fall, says that of the nearly 60,000 television advertising roles in 1987, 11.93% were filled by minority actors, down from 12.28% in 1984.

While the percentage has increased 45% in feature films and television programs, “ethnic performers may actually be slipping backward in TV ads,” the report said.

And it’s not just the overall statistics that are frustrating to civil rights groups, minority media executives and the actors themselves; it’s also the kinds of ads that offer roles for minorities.

Some kinds of companies, they say, particularly housing developers, Japanese and West German car companies and firms selling so-called upscale products--rarely use blacks, Latinos or even Asians to promote their products.

“I think the biggest need is to stop segmenting groups in our population” based on stereotypes, added Elaine F. Brodey, who heads a Screen Actors Guild program to utilize more minority actors in advertising. “Blacks can sell cars, Hispanics do have credit cards, Asians do not always speak a foreign language and Native Americans do not run around with feathers and a tomahawk in their hands.”

Disclaimer Required

The lack of minorities in housing ads, for instance, drew some attention earlier this month when the NAACP and two other groups filed a lawsuit against the New York Times. They charged the newspaper with publishing real estate ads that almost always portray whites as potential buyers--a violation of civil rights laws.

Although the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the Open Housing Center of New York are pursuing the case, the NAACP withdrew from the suit on Jan. 13, noting that it had failed to follow its usual policy of consulting beforehand with targets of lawsuits. The newspaper said the lawsuit was “without merit,” but the dispute mirrors similar complaints lodged against real estate ads in other newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

The Los Angeles Times now requires that real estate ads contain “a disclaimer that says ‘models used in this ad do not reflect any racial preference’ ” to comply with federal equal housing opportunity laws, said Joan Heid, retail and general display advertising manager in The Times’ classified department. A special logo depicting four ethnic groups--Asian, Latino, black and white--is also used in such ads, Heid said.

Advertising agencies say they take seriously the need to show racial and ethnic diversity in the ads they create.

“We have a contractual obligation (with unions) as well as a moral obligation to foster the use of minorities in advertising,” said Dorothy Forget, a spokeswoman for the American Assn. of Advertising Agencies in New York. “We are very aware of our commitment. But I don’t see that there’s that far to go. I don’t think we are discriminating” against minorities.

Foreigners Preferred

Some ad executives also say the absence of minorities in advertising is not always a product of racism and discrimination.

“I think clients have been made overly sensitive as to how and when to use blacks because they are afraid of tokenism,” said Lee Clow, president and creative director of Chiat/Day, the largest advertising agency in Los Angeles and the producer of scores of award-winning ads. “But I think the consumer is getting pretty sophisticated. The color barrier is breaking down.”

Shuji Okawa, a vice president at Hakuhodo America Advertising Inc., the Los Angeles-based subsidiary of respected Japanese agency Hakuhodo, says that because the Japanese are loathe to focus attention on themselves, they often use famous foreigners in Japanese advertising--from heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson to actor Dustin Hoffman--or no actors at all.

That philosophy extends even to the U.S., where Japanese beer maker Sapporo shuns actors of any kind because it doesn’t want them to detract from its advertising message, Okawa said. By contrast, spots for Miller, Budweiser and other American beers often use dozens of actors in barroom settings.

“The characteristic we want to emphasize is the quality of the (beer), not the person,” said Okawa, whose agency produces ads for Sapporo as well as ANA Airlines, NEC Corp. and other Japanese companies.

Earl G. Graves Jr., Black Enterprise’s vice president of advertising and son of publisher Earl G. Graves, said the advertising climate has improved since his father complained in an interview two years ago that Japanese consumer electronics companies were reluctant to advertise in black-oriented magazines.

Nevertheless, the younger Graves said that, among some West German car makers and Japanese companies, there is still “a prejudgment that if a product is associated with blacks or minorities in general that it’s not as good, not as upscale. Our readers have a median household income of $51,000, according to independent research. . . . But advertisers think the black market is an all-inclusive market” of consumers with similar tastes and income.

Minority-Run Agencies

“We don’t have any statistics (on advertising),” countered Michael Tsukamoto, director of the Electronics Industry Assn. of Japan, a New York-based trade group representing Japanese electronics companies. “But I don’t think that we have any discrimination against minorities. It’s always up to the companies which media to buy.”

Thomas McGurn, a spokesman for BMW, said he’s unsure whether BMW has used minority actors because most BMW ads do not use live talent. However, a commercial for the BMW 6 series luxury coupe that ran last year showed a glamorous white couple in evening wear promoting the car. It was the sole national spot for the car, McGurn said.

Such portrayals might be less commonplace if corporations hired minority-run advertising agencies that might avoid racial stereotypes, critics contend. Byron Lewis, chairman and chief executive of Uniworld Group Inc., a black-owned agency based in New York, says major corporations rarely assign minority agencies the responsibility of putting together an entire general market ad campaign.

To change such attitudes, the Screen Actors Guild has begun showing advertisers a 30-minute reel of commercials it says shows minorities in non-stereotypical roles. A Citibank ad shows a black credit cardholder telephoning a Latino customer service representative. A SAG spokesman said it is one of the few financial services TV ads with an entire ethnic cast.

Meanwhile, Procter & Gamble Co., the nation’s biggest advertiser, has created a management position to coordinate ad placement with black-owned media. The move came after the National Assn. of Black-Owned Broadcasters claimed that P&G; spent only $2.5 million on advertising in black media annually, compared to $20 million in Latino advertising.