RETHINK is an occasional series featuring contemporary thought on classic Ebony And Jet photos and articles.
We asked ad agency executive Mat Burnett, of Super Genius LLC in Chicago to give some modern perspective on a series of revolutionary ads done by Johnson Publishing in the late 1960s and how far (or not) ethnic advertising has come since then.
In 2009 when you talk about Blacks in advertising or minorities in advertising, you’re really talking about the gap between consumers and creators. In the late 50s and early 60s – the so-called golden age of advertising – the hard work was convincing mainstream advertisers that Black folks had real money to spend, never mind who was making the ads. That was the first battle that the “experimental” ads from Johnson Publishing were fighting, a fight to value the purchasing power and relevance of a Black consumer market. A consumer market that was perfectly ready, willing and able to purchase basic mass marketed products like detergent and beer. And, honestly, it’s the fight you had to win first before you could move on to deeper issues, like who exactly is going to create the messages.
The creative strength of these ads, despite how old-fashioned and downright clumsy they seem today, is in the humor and the audacity of the communication. The message is basically, “you’re not going to believe this, but Black people actually have money to spend!” Radical in its honesty, if not in its pedigree. Like everyone else at the time, the creatives behind the Johnson ads were taking a page from Doyle Dane Bernbach’s “Think Small” campaign for Volkswagen. Advertising that was astoundingly simple and relied on strong visuals and challenging headlines – a breakthrough notion in the 60s.
Source: ebonyjet.com
