Marketing blackness

Abstract

Marketing blackness, or black cultural identity, involves promotional strategies reliant on persons and other symbolic and material representations socially and historically constructed as black (e.g. speech and phonetic conventions, folklore, style, fashion, music, usage of the body, and the black physical form). This research presents a framework that assesses the strategic role blackness representations play in US advertising. The framework addresses the fundamental question of how advertisers use blackness representations to deliver promises about their products' benefits, a necessary first step in ultimately understanding their effectiveness and their impact on blackness itself. The framework orders blackness representations along two dimensions of meaning based on the central claims made in advertisements: (1) claims about the product/brand as a cultural resource, and (2) claims about the viewer that emphasize themes of similarity or difference. The framework also specifies a range of advertising strategies reliant on blackness representations located along the two dimensions. I suggest that the time has come to change the focus of research on blackness representations from numeric representation and role status to understanding their role in promotional strategy more broadly, particularly in branding.