Targetting black, female Obama supporters. At all costs.
American marketers – social or otherwise – don’t have Australians’ skittishness over race. All manner of campaigns – from soft drinks to financial services – are specifically aimed at cultural groups including these remarkable social marketing campaigns aimed squarely at the black female audience.
Anti-choice campaigners Life Always identified black women as a key market for terminations and obeyed marketing rule #1: Tailor your message to your audience.
Thus Life Always tried to leverage black female support of US President Obama to engage and persuade their audience. They also took design cues for the billboard, now displayed in Chicago after being booted out of New York, from his 2008 campaign posters. They threw in a single statistic.
Note the use of the word “our”. Cunning. The idea behind that single word is that the black community sees the message and feels that it delivered not only to the black community but by the black community. This abortion-is-a-black-issue idea is more prominent in this billboard which is also inspiring howls of protest.
Abortion is aparently a black issue.
Billboards are a great way to geographically target an audience which is why most of the 30 billboards will be placed in the predominately black south side of Chicago.
And how about this soundbite to target your audience?
Life Always board member Rev. Derek McCoy said, “These are babies who could grow to be the future presidents of the United States, or the next Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington or Maya Angelou.”
Can you imagine ever targetting an ethnic community to such an extent? You should. Hit Leave a reply to make a comment.
Anti-abortion messages are always heavy.Meant to induce guilt, they are directed exclusively at women at their most vulnerable. So, whatever the ethnic background of their targets, it is an attack.
Now to something more jolly: in the ’80’s in Melbourne there were some fun billboards obviously directed at the numerous citizens of Greek heritage. The boards proclaimed the virtues of a certain ouzo if I remember rightly, by saying that it was the favourite tipple of “Every Kon, Nick and Ari”. Clever and fun!
I find these messages as distasteful and low as many of you would. However after the anger comes response – and that’s when this type of scaremongering really comes into its own because what’s the flipside? the response?
every 21 seconds our next possible drug dealer is aborted
the most dangerous place for an african american is in the womb – because they don’t understand the basic tennants of nutrition
then i thought about it some more – the message is not as simple though – choice never is.
every 21 seconds a woman makes a choice that with better support services, she might not have to
every 21 seconds a woman makes a choice that’s none of your business
every 21 seconds a woman is lucky to have a safe, clean choice in America – why does American aid take this choice away from women worldwide?