Comments on: Picture Yourself

By: emma

emma — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:39:12 +0000

what follows isn’t a justification but an explanation of what i think is going through their heads. i agree with you that this is probably a considered aspect of the product, but probably not malice per se. i bet it is a matter of the company wanting as little attention as possible to be paid to the pictures so that people are able to project the image of their own family into it. and so the most socially visible demographic is defaulted too. its not that they don’t want people of all colors to buy their product, but they think that POCs are already used to seeing white ppl everywhere and probably won’t single out their company for it. it is the same way as if on the news they were going to show an image of human body to explain a medial phenomon or something . . . it will always be male unless it is a female specific issue. women are so used to being ignored they probably won’t notice. men won’t notice either but both would notice it was a female body. men, who are used to being catered too might then experience an inability to relate to the image. its like one time somebody told audrey that she shouldn’t have revealed to her readers that she is female because it makes her comic ‘harder to relate to.’ but women are just automatically expected to be able to relate to men. sorry to relate everything to feminism, its just by easiest touchstone. but i think the issue is the same. marketers know that in catering too those already catered too, people will just keep acting like they do without resistance or unprediatability.

By: Mish

Mish — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:54:14 +0000

You raise a very valid point. And no, you are not over thinking it. Sometimes people tend to overlook products because of the “audience” the company is targeting. If it was showing beautiful people of all races, not only is it more appealing to the masses, but sales may even go up. Make people feel included…make them feel that your products represent people across the board. Making product is one thing; opening your eyes and marketing to all people, of all races is another thing. :)

By: Eileen Gunn

Eileen Gunn — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:02:45 +0000

Tom, I can relate to your POV, but the fact is that marketing is a sea that we all swim in. What pollutes it pollutes all our lives. It is important — to the community — that marketing materials reflect all the people in it. It’s not just that it oppressive to the people who are excluded, it’s harmful to the people who are represented as well, as they are being presented with a false view of their world, of who’s important in it, of who deserves the product being marketed.

As a marketing person with a very long history, I have dealt, in the distant past, with clients who say “women don’t buy our products” and “black people don’t buy our products.” It used to be that the best way to deal with these clients was simply not to use pictures of people in the promotional materials: conservative white clients would notice and prevent you from using women and people of color in the ads, but they didn’t keep you from doing what they didn’t notice you were doing. That changed (in my industry) in the 1980s, fortunately. For my company, it changed simply because I felt (and my boss agreed) that we could argue, truthfully, that it was a global company and the advertising needed to reflect that. I had found an argument that worked.

That’s kind of a long way of saying it doesn’t matter why people do the right thing. It’s important that it gets done.

By: tom

tom — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:23:36 +0000

It might seem equally as crass no matter what the photos contained – nowadays when you see a deliberate “mix” or ethnicities on TV commercials, for example, you know that each individual was selected to represent an acceptable type for that product or that corporate image. As demographics shift more and more over the next generation, expect chsnge, but don’t expect marketing tigers to change their stripes! I suppose it’s better to be included in the sample than excluded, but it’s still just selling soap by any means necessary.

By: J. Andrews

J. Andrews — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:40:27 +0000

I had a similar thought. But maybe it’s even more than the thought that American = white, but that Western world = white. Americans, Canadians, Brits, Europeans, etc.

I’d be interested to hear what photos come preloaded on a frame bought in Japan.

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:17:01 +0000

I do work at a Wal-Mart and sometimes do work in the furniture department where I handle photoframes. I remember the most popular picture for one brand of frames was that of a family; I couldn’t tell the family’s ethicity, they could have been black or hispanic or white or bi-racial. When I go into work on Friday I’ll take a better look at the frames.

By: Eileen Gunn

Eileen Gunn — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:52:47 +0000

Jed, 20 or 30 years ago, that’s the answer you’d get. But I suspect the problem here is that the amount of marketing savvy that goes into the sample photos on a cheap electronic household toy is pretty limited.

Either (1) yes, it’s a bunch of white folks and they’re just not thinking at all, or (2) the device was made somewhere other than the US for the US market, and they’re thinking (rather vaguely) that American=white.

(2) Seems more likely to me.

By: Robert Hutchinson

Robert Hutchinson — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:45:46 +0000

My first thought was that it was reflecting “white as default” in some combination of two ways. 1) The photo selectors are just selecting the photos that they consider “average”. 2) The photo selectors are deliberately selecting photos that they believe the buying public, both white and brown, will see as “average”.

But point #2 doesn’t seem to make as much sense if these are photos that the buyer never even gets to see until after they’ve already bought the frame. So, I wonder if these slideshows are actually geared more towards being seen as part of a sample product that a store is displaying?

By: Jed

Jed — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:43:56 +0000

I hope you’re right that it’s unconscious; that makes it something that could potentially be fixed fairly easily, by calling attention to it.

But the argument that I most often hear in other situations where only white people are shown is “People of color will buy stuff that only shows white people, but white people won’t buy stuff that shows people of color.” I have no idea how true that is, but if true, it’s awfully depressing. And regardless of whether it’s really true, if the marketing people believe it’s true then it gets perpetuated. :(

Anyway, regardless of the underlying causes, I’m glad you’re calling attention to the problem.

By: Eileen Gunn

Eileen Gunn — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:13:30 +0000

Not to deny that’s it’s annoying, ABW. Just sayin’, especially to any people who, say, work in a photo lab that sells a bunch of those frames. Might be pretty easy to change the pictures….