Christmas ads from Primark and JD Sports have seen the retailers triumph against Waitrose, Coca-Cola and Bailey’s in terms of authentic representation of black culture.
An industry survey from Diversity Standards Collective (DSC) revealed that, while progress had been made on including black people in adverts, work is still needed to ensure authentic cultural representation.
DSC asked 100 UK black consumers whether they felt five Christmas ad campaigns were “culturally representative of their community”.
Primark led the way, closely followed by a strong showing from JD Sports, as both tested positively in terms of authenticity and representation of the black community. In contrast, Waitrose, Coca-Cola and Baileys received both mixed and negative feedback.
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Almost 9 out of ten respondents (89%) considered Primark’s Christmas TV advert to be an authentic portrayal of the black community, with almost unanimous (97%) agreement that it contains nothing offensive or culturally problematic.
Comments about the Primark ad included: “This feels most like my Christmases from when I was a kid with the joy, noise, love and mess of families at home for Christmas celebrating together” and “Especially nice to see a whole dark-skinned black family in the mix”.
Bailey’s advert was seen to be the least culturally representative, with comments including: “It’s a little bit like let’s just get some musical black people to make our brand ‘cool’ and it falls on its backside.”
“This research clearly shows that there is a significant gap between the positive step of increased representation and the often hugely inaccurate portrayal of black communities,” said DSC head of research methodology and insights, Sibs Mjali.
“Cast doesn’t mean culture. We know retailer’s and creatives can sometimes struggle to verify if what they have produced feels authentic to the communities they are portraying, but it is vital that if they are trying to speak to a community in their ads, they talk to that community beforehand.”
The research also found that, while black people were broadly well represented in Christmas campaigns such as Primark’s, other minority groups – such as Asians and LGBT+ communities – remained consistently underrepresented.
“It’s pleasing to see positive movement in the authenticity of characters in this year’s Christmas ads,” said DSC CEO Rich Miles.
“But the real eye-opener is that when we looked at testing multiple communities, we could only test the black community because there wasn’t enough representation within the Christmas ads of other minority groups to make a fair sample size. Now this is what needs fixing next year.”
