Nat Kekana thinks the government could do better. The chair of the Portfolio Committee on Communications, an ANC member of parliament since 1994, thinks it’s “unacceptable” that the South African government directs so little of its allocated adspend towards the majority of the population the electorate that has voted it into power. “In this sense,” says Kekana, “government departments are almost as bad as the marketers.”
Almost, but not quite. The difference in degree has something to do with the difference between a national responsibility and an economic imperative. The one is dependent on democratic theory, which holds that elected leaders are accountable to a citizenry. The other is dependent on capitalistic fact, which holds that funds are invested in areas that offer the greatest potential for return.
It’s a distinction that sheds light on the less-than-delicate interplay of forces surrounding the parliamentary hearings into racism in advertising. It also explains the eruption of emotion following the hearings’ initial announcement.
Back in November 2001, when Kekana’s committee first asked representatives of the advertising and marketing industries to justify the innate whiteness of their ad content, their media placements and themselves, the collective dread of a cash-flow apocalypse brought on by legislation was palpable. The sheer abruptness of the situation didn’t do much to allay fears. “The ad industry was set up,” wrote Tony Koenderman in AdFocus some months later. “It was given little time to prepare, and almost no information about how the hearings were to be conducted.”
But well before the second hearings rolled around a year later, reason seemed to have been restored. Panic had given way to a somewhat reluctant acceptance, and the horror of financial collapse was largely forgotten. Speculating on why this was so, Kekana reflects that although his committee were expecting hostility and resistance, their intention was never in doubt: it was to ensure non-discrimination, not to condemn success. He says it was made clear early on that legislation was never an overriding objective.
Of course, there’s the cynic’s response to the above. Parliament didn’t legislate because they couldn’t. Intervention is one thing, but telling marketers where to spend their money quite another.
It’s a line Kekana vehemently rejects. “You can’t in any situation say there can be no legislation. The industry has to inspire its own legislation. You need a united front for transformation.” As an afterthought he says: “Lets not narrow this. Its more about how we show ourselves to the world.”
So here’s the perception issue. Media may be a pimple on the arse of the South African economy, as Harry Herber of The MediaShop eloquently puts it, but it has influence way beyond its size. The point was paraphrased in smoother tones by Koenderman in the aforementioned AdFocus piece: “Advertising should reflect society more realistically than it does, and any failure to do so serves only to entrench prejudice. That’s the burden of an industry so publicly exposed.”
THE burden has been dumped in a couple of backyards in the last few years. First it was the media planners, who Kekana famously characterised as 22-year-old white girls that live in Sandton and watch Ally McBeal the inference being that since they can’t possibly understand how the majority of the population consume media, they can’t place adspend equitably.
The same accusation had been levelled by black urban youth station Yfm before the hearings commenced. Y felt the inherent white bias of the planners and buyers was having an adverse affect on revenue.
“I’m trying to be fair to the race debate,” says CEO of Y Dirk Hartford today. “A station like Highveld has two-thirds of our audience and they’re doing six to seven times our revenue. Is that racism, or because they have the best sales team around?”
As quoted in last month’s issue of The Media, Terry Volkwyn, CEO of Primedia Broadcasting, goes with the latter. “The acid test is not the stereotyped media buyer,” she says. “If that were true, our clients wouldn’t continue with us. Highveld is not cheap, but it delivers.”
The argument is valid media owners’ business practices (the effectiveness of sales and marketing teams and the audience value of the offering) need to be factored into ad revenue comparisons but it’s an argument that ignores the ‘soft’ aspects of planning and buying media. Donald Liphoko, media director at FCB Africa and a representative of AMF (Advertising Media Forum) and SAARF (South African Advertising Research Foundation) at the parliamentary hearings last November, touches on this when he says that the business is driven by relationships. According to Liphoko, the few black planners there are don’t break into the relevant networks, so they can’t impart their knowledge of black consumers. “The business is not welcome of outsiders in general,” he says. “Blacks are outsiders.”
Shaking up the status quo by attracting more blacks into planning won’t be easy. Liphoko explains that because of the premium on black graduates, they demand higher salaries than their white counterparts, which means that at some stage their bosses will no longer be able to afford them. And if they remain and work up the ladder, there are unexpected pressures in store. “When you become a director and get a shareholding, you’re expected to bring in a lot of new clients,” says Liphoko. “You think to yourself: ‘I’m black, I’m young, I shouldn’t be going through this. This is not my company.'”
DESPITE (or perhaps because of) these difficulties, the focus has now shifted from the media planners and onto the marketers. Although Koenderman and countless others have made the point that marketers seek to communicate with the most desirable target audience in the most cost-effective manner, and that it is consequently ridiculous to assume they will ignore potential consumers just because they are black, the issue is making its way back up the agenda. The question is still one of perception. Do the marketers simply presume that traditionally white media can deliver a more affluent audience than media with a majority black audience, or is this really the case?
Brenda Wortley, chair of the AMF and a strong voice at both parliamentary hearings, says there’s been a realisation in parliament that marketers sit on top of the food chain. She says marketing department researchers don’t interrogate the data regularly enough to know that things are changing to know, for example, that the Sowetan has more ‘A income’ readers (R7,000 plus per household p/m) than the Business Day [see graph]. “The Sowetan and The Star compare well in terms of the income of readership,” adds Wortley, “but The Star gets almost three times the revenue.”
So Kekana, who enquired as to the conspicuous absence of big advertisers such as Coca-Cola and South African Breweries from the second parliamentary hearings, reiterates that marketers don’t know their consumers. As evidence for this, he cites the increasing dependence on below-the-line advertising in black areas. “If there’s uncertainty and you don’t understand consumers, you buy space on a billboard. It’s a mixed bag approach. It’s because the marketer is not aware of what’s happening in the black communities. Marketers need to put their consumers first.”
Kekana is aware that the statement exposes him to charges of naivety. Arguing that marketers should let consumers drive adspend is practically forgetting the history of consumer capitalism, where the job of the marketer and his advertising agency is to make a convincing argument that a certain product is indispensable to a happy life. But it’s difficult to fault Kekana’s attendant point that the profitability of South African marketers is linked to long-term sustainability, which is ultimately about acknowledging the black majority.
“The charge is not just about racism,” says Kekana, “its about market structure. If the majority of the population is black, you can’t ignore that market. The economic fundamentals of South Africa are good, and that has a positive spin on the advertising industry. The marketers, who are also captains of industry, must start showing confidence in the economy.”
Kekana is clear about what he wants. He summarises carefully, making sure there’s no room for misinterpretation: “A representative, inclusive, responsive and in-touch world-class ad industry that is responsible and sustainable.”
On his way to achieving his wish, he has exhibited fortitude and patience. He has faith that members of the industry can rise above sectoral interests of their own accord, so he has emphasised diplomacy above intimidation. He believes that change is occurring, that recent ad agency empowerment deals (such as those between King James and The Kuzwayo Agency and between Leo Burnett and the Lobedu Consortium) are connected to the issues raised by his parliamentary committee. More importantly, he believes that that these deals are not just about black faces appearing in boardrooms, but that they are also about control of the creative process.
As for the media planners and the marketers, it seems a little more patience is necessary. Perhaps they’ll take their cue from Kekana’s next mission, which is to get the government itself to change its attitude towards consumers.