A marketing study determines that the quickest way to access South African black youth is through subcultures. Justin Pearce reports
Ultraviolet light glows on the fluourescent grafitti-style murals. Ambient techno throbs in the background as the guests, their rave tickets hanging round their necks, down smart drinks before entering the venue.
Can this really be Lower Houghton on a Thursday morning? Well, yes, actually it can, as becomes apparent from the age of the participants (30 plus), their dress (Hilton Weiner and definitely unfluourescent), and the coffee and croissants that they tuck into once they’ve got rid of the smart drinks.
The occasion was the Xpressers Rave Breakfast, an event put together by the Jupiter Drawing Room to launch a report which is intended to tell us — advertisers, agencies and the media — everything we ever wanted to know about South African youth.
First on stage was Gill Mkhasibe, who took the trouble to point out that the combination of her surname and her (pale) skin colour was rather odd in South Africa, in case we hadn’t noticed. Mkhasibe, of the Alternative Consultancy, was responsible for the survey of black youth which reached the conclusision that subcultures are the quickest way to the heart of township kids.
As many as 60 percent of black youth identify strongly with one of three subcultures, Mkhasibe told us: rappers, pantsulas, and Italians. Each group has its own dress conventions, music, slang and even its own way of walking — and Mkahsibe had specimens lined up to show us. Rap sounds filled the air, and the dreadlocked and baggy-jeaned Chris came forward. Mkhasibe asked him what appealed to him about rap.
“The first thing I noticed when I heard rap was the rhythm,” Chris replied in flawless fake American.
“Listen to the accent, ladies and gentlemen,” Mkhasibe observed. “This is a boy from Naledi, Soweto.”
Mkhasibe stressed the wholesomeness of rap culture — anti-drugs, anti-violence — which contrasts with the shady image of the tsotsitaal-speaking pantsulas. Then there are the Italians, who like Luther Vandross and whose spiritual home is the Carlton Centre boutiques.
Maggie Langlands took the podium to talk about white youth, where the subcultural situation is more complicated. Only 30 percent of young whites identify with a subculture, and the subcultures are far more numerous: alternatives, punks, goths, technoids, metalheads, homeboys, yuppies, hippies and grunge were the labels on the subcultures identified by the report. In the absence of the genuine samples, Jupiter Drawing Room staff members had been dressed up for the occasion in the appropriate gear.
With each of the white subcultures accounting for such a small number of people, it was hard to see their value as advertising tools — to attempt a goth- oriented cooldrink marketing strategy, or a grunge-oriented deodorant-ad campaign would mean niche marketing taken to a ridiculous extent.
But the clean image of rap already seems to have caught on as a way of reaching black youth, if we are to believe the collection of favourite television commercials which were shown at the breakfast. Several of these featured rap music and dance sequences. Black youth also liked the sangoma version of the Sanlam babies ad, the Palmolive ad with the woman singing in the bath, and the Castle ad where the team raise money to send a buddy overseas, among others.
White youth liked one of the Sanlam baby ads, but this time one which featured mostly white babies. But more typical of the ads preferred by whites were those that imply that the world is not all that it might be: the Toyota ad where everything except the car goes wrong, the Coke ad with the boy sweating on a hot day, the Radio 5 ad in which a boy in a flat thinks he’s got the attention of the girl across the road when only the audience knows that every boy in the block thinks the same.
Questions about leisure activities showed that black and white youth have a fair amount in common, though black youths’ patterns of consumption are largely determined by where they can get to by public transport — whites are far more likely to have access to a car. Both black and white kids spend a lot of money on clothes, hang out in malls, go to movies and to clubs.
Radio was identified as the medium with the most loyal following among both black and white youth, but there was almost no overlap in station preferences: black youth are overwhelmingly dedicated to Radio Metro, whites to Radio 5. Similarly with sport: the topic is popular across the board, but the sports preferred by black and white youth are largely dependent on the facilities to which they have access.
But whatever disparities there may be in how black and white youth spend their leisure time, the report identifies a large overlap in the values which they hold dear — even if white kids do like TV ads that show the world falling to pieces.
One of the intentions of the report was to find out whether South African youth form an equivalent to America’s “Generation X” — the overeducated, undermotivated batch of young adults who came of age without hope of being able to make a contribution to the world. The answer to this question was a reasonably loud “no”.
South African youth certainly have their fears, mostly centering on crime, violence and unemployment, but they are generally optimistic about the future and see themselves as the generation whose task it is to build a new society — hence the term “Xpressers”, coined by the Jupiter Drawing Room to form a deliberate contrast with the pessimistic Generation X. If South African youth are frustrated, it is as a result of not having the skills to achieve their ambitions, unlike Generation X-ers who typically have higher education and nothing to do with it.
Black youths fear unemployment as a consequence of job shortages — white youths fear unemployment as a result of affirmative action, but are confident that they can still compete if they try hard enough. Both groups saw self- employment as a likely career, and rated “bringing equality” as one of the ways they wanted to change the world.
Assuming all this is true, the Jupiter Drawing Room couldn’t have found a more graphic example of Xpressers than Intimate, the ragga group who took to the stage as the waiters laid on the bacon and eggs. They performed a rap tribute to Nelson Mandela and, as the irrepressible Mkhasibe reminded us, “they are available for product launches”.