‘If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall in the ditch” (Matt 14). Applicable in the first century AD, and strangely enough applicable more than 1,900 years later. Perhaps the greatest appeal of advertising and marketing is the latitude one has in finding solutions to problems. It’s not architecture, engineering or medicine where there is usually a single solution. Either the wall falls down or stands. The patient gets better or dies. Not so in our industry. A problem throws up a plethora of solutions – all we have to do is pick the most appropriate.
Our judgement criteria? Knowledge, experience, and that wonderful synonym for ‘I think so” commonly referred to as gut-feel. And we’re really comfortable with it, which makes it worse. Can you imagine, after telling a doctor your symptoms, that you’d be happy with a response that went ‘mmmmm — my gut-feel tells me you need a liver transplant”? I don’t think so.
Which all leads me back to the debate on why we need to attract people of colour into this business as quickly as possible.
It goes without saying that the average brand manager, media planner, agency strategist, art director and copywriter are absolutely brilliant. No argument. But so often white by colour, or white by association. And whilst the melting pot of SA is at work, and furiously so, there are glaring inadequacies in the communication industry when it comes to handling the status quo.
South Africa is a country rich in diversity, from LSMs 1 to 10. The have-nothings to the have-plenty’s. We speak many different languages, have diverse cultures, beliefs, and value systems. We eat different foods according to upbringing, listen to different radio stations, watch different TV shows, and read different newspapers. We are politically divided on whom we vote for, and religiously there is little commonality.
The situation and society is extremely complex to say the least.
So logic tells you that within any communications company you should have the entire spectrum of the ‘rainbow nation’ represented. People who have walked the same road as the markets they are talking to. People who share the same value system, language, religion, social norms and upbringing. And this is where and why we need affirmative appointments – to communicate better. To press the right buttons. Not because there is a quota system threatening. The criticism is universally applicable, and I include myself. How can the average white media planner get to grips with the nuance, the content, the characters and audience reaction of a TV show they’ve never watched, or a radio station that may as well be broadcast in Russian for all the sense it makes to them?
The average communication strategy has to be devalued when the strategist has never been in the home of the person he is addressing with the strategy, or any home like it. He’s never walked the same roads, nor ridden in the same taxi. Or any taxi! Ditto for the creative team. So then the very best one can hope for will be ‘vanilla’ by nature, trying to walk the safe road of using universal values to appeal to any market. But brilliant? Only in the eye of the creator, dubiously in the eye of the beholder.
Harry Herber is group managing director of The MediaShop.