Companies, Please Reflect Your Employees in Your Marketing

Why don’t ads show the true diversity of the workforce?

This marketing madness must stop. Your kitchen does not look as nice as the one above, and that woman is not coming to clean it. We get so consumed with this fantasy of how we engage with companies, their employees, and their products and services.

I am a child of the ’80s — arguably the best decade to grow up, especially if you lived on the East Coast of the United States. Why? Because there was (and still is) such a diversity of people in those cities. My best friends from middle school through college were a Puerto Rican, three Black Americans, an Armenian, an Indian, a Haitian, a Greek, two Italians, one Irish, two Mexicans, one Chinese, and one Korean guy.

While this sounds like the beginning of a racial joke, I have no punchline. This is no exaggeration.

Over the two decades from the ’80s into the ’90s people didn’t have to be so politically correct. With my diverse set of friends, we could regularly joke about stereotypes from each of our cultures as it was never done with ill intent. No one got offended, but you might be, if the plumber who showed up to your house was not a white guy showing lots of butt crack when he was fixing the leak under the sink — this is who you expected in order to get your money’s worth.

Whether someone fit the mold or broke the mold from what you expected, honestly it was never a big deal. Were they nice? Were they respectful of you and your things? Did they do a good job at a fair price? That’s all that mattered.

While America is the most diverse country in the world, there remains a lot of ironies in advertising in how we depict consumers versus the employees of companies that serve them.

Now having spent over two decades in marketing, it blows me away to see how companies handle “so-called” diversity in their ads. It’s been well-documented that people like to do business with people they can relate to — this also translates to buying products and services that are used by people who look like you. This marketing strategy has been used for decades, especially in marketing consumer products.

If Callaway Golf thinks their customer is middle-aged white men, they’ll put middle-aged white men in the advertisements for golf clubs.

If Nike knows kids in urban areas who watch the NBA are the biggest buyers of their sneakers, they’ll put NBA players and urban themes in their commercials.

Victoria’s Secret wanted young, size 4, white women in their stores for years, so they found those “angels” to model their clothes.

Universities who want to attract a diverse student population ensure their website and brochures show a diverse group of students.

This seems to make sense, especially when the person seeing the ad is the end user of the product.

Somehow, this marketing rule doesn’t translate to service companies and how they feature their workers in commercials and news advertisements.

I’ve lived in Texas for over a decade and every home services ad sent to my house always features a smiling white guy, in a cleanly pressed uniform, doing the work. Oh, and he comes in with booties on his feet to keep your carpet clean.

I’ve only seen such a unicorn once when I needed a master electrician to come install a new outlet off my garage.

For every other home service, whether it’s the lawn guy, the roofers, carpet installation, HVAC, or the window replacement company, it’s almost always a Mexican American or Black American male that shows up to do the work. Same thing for cleaning companies — I’ve seen Latinas mostly and maybe a few Black Americans.

Many of these companies, which are white owned, target ads in nice suburban neighborhoods featuring workers that look like the neighborhood. I find this ironic, when the employees (or subcontractors) doing the work look nothing like the makeup of the neighborhood.

You’re good enough to work for us, but not to represent our company.

Back where I grew up, there were Italian Americans that did roofing work and full home construction, but you don’t see that much in any part of Texas. So, I wouldn’t expect them to be in my newspaper ads.

There are quite a few Eastern European workers where I currently live. The Avis rental car company and McDonald’s near my house are staffed with several Ukrainian employees, but you won’t see a commercial with them behind the counter.

I’m not expecting every company to go full Woke on their advertising, but when almost every company features the same race or same nationality of their employees in ads, it looks off.

These companies do a disservice to their customers and their workers when they don’t represent them in their advertisements. The subtext says, “You’re good enough to work for us, but not to represent our company.”

But the hypocrisy cuts both ways, and I’m just as guilty as everyone. If the ad featured a short guy in a sweaty, dirty t-shirt coming to fix your front door lock, would you really hire them? What if he was the best locksmith in the city?

Not all of us can look like models and clean kitchen floors really well, but there has to be a happy medium.

I applaud companies that are at least starting to put their team photos on the company website. If your call center is 90% Black, don’t hide behind that fact, showing a young white woman answering the phones.

Conclusion

Marketing is a funny thing, especially as a Black man in America. There’s a fine line to walk in trying to represent your customer, your employee, and even what you aspire to be.

It’s a mind trip to think about the differences here when compared to other countries. In Japan, everyone looks Asian, so every advertisement can be Asian with little fanfare, but even in other countries humans tend find a way to obsess over the images being used.

If we are going to be “diverse” in America, let’s be diverse everywhere, that includes better representation on who really works at your company in your ads.

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