Reactions to Gender Diversity in US Television Advertising

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session is Kenton Wilkinson, whose interest is the presence of biracial couples and mixed-race families in US television advertising. Such diversity is becoming a new flashpoint in current culture wars in the country.

There is a long history of such culture wars in the US, but they have ramped up much further in recent years. In Texas, where Kenton is based, this has been especially pronounced, not least also in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic; the current Texas governor Greg Abbott has been at the forefront of implementing a number of especially divisive policies that seek to suppress federal gender and racial diversity policies.

In this context, racial diversity in US television advertising is also emerging as a growing flashpoint. Non-white individuals have become more visible in advertising in recent years, in response to a changing society, changing consumer preferences, and increasing purchase activism that responds to perceptions of companies as inclusive. Kenton conducted an undergraduate student survey to examine current attitudes to such changes in advertising.

98% of students noticed these changes, and saw changes in demographics, greater sensitivity or inclusion, and companies’ desires to be seen as inclusive as potential drivers; only 1% of students saw this as problematic, and 29% had a neutral response.

Kenton’s own experience of TV advertising also noted the growing visibility of apparent biracial couples and children in advertising, especially in domestic settings; most of the combinations here were of white women and black men, or of black women and white men; Latino individuals are substantially less visible, even in spite of the substantial number of biracial relationships involving Latinos in the US, and the significant percentage of US residents with Latino heritage. Intimacy is often implied, and this is somewhat problematic given the history of race relations in the US.

More work on this should be done, especially in the highly fraught current political context in the US.