How to make sure Christmas 2023’s advertising doesn’t only talk to white audiences

“It’s not an authentic portrayal of the black community as there’s only one main black character with the rest of the cast being white. It’s also not centered around black culture.” [Comment on Sainsbury’s 2022 Christmas ad]

“Not all black people are homeless or poor!” [Comment on Shelter’s 2022 Christmas ad]

These are some of the more negative comments the Diversity Standards Collective got when we used our Community Certification ad testing tool to test 12 Christmas ads featuring Black and mixed-raced casts with members of the Black community. But they weren’t the only ones.

Comment after comment after comment all pointed to basically the same thing – tokenism, negative stereotyping and inauthentic representation of the festive season is still a huge part of creativity and casting in the current crop of Christmas ads. Just placing a person of color in an advert isn’t enough and the comments reflect that.

Of the 12 ads we tested, only five scored more than 75% with our respondents and passed our test, which points to a pretty significant problem in our industry. While Christmas advertising has become a tent-pole event for our industry, this research shows we are still only really authentically reaching a white audience.

To get these results, the DSC asked 54 members of the Black community from across the UK via its online Community Certification ad testing tool. Two key questions around authenticity and their community’s response were asked because this builds a more robust response for clients. The DSC then finds the mean score, which equals the ad’s overall score to receive either a pass or fail certification. All content must hit 75% positivity or above for it to be certified by that community. When the tool goes live, it will always survey 100 people. The questions are:

• Do you feel this is an authentic portrayal of your community?

• Do you think this content will be responded to positively by your community?

For each question, The DSC counted up the percentage of ’yes’ answers and the percentage of ’no’ answers and worked out a mean average.

One of the main issues is thinking that putting a Black or mixed-race face or family in an ad will appeal to that demographic. Sadly, it won’t. As comments such as the following attest, the Black community sees through this as nothing more than virtue signaling or tokenism:

“I don’t look like that nor does my family. My Christmases have never been like that.”

Yes, it’s a step forward from where we were a few years ago, but it’s still a step backward in properly including minority communities.

However, it wasn’t all bad. Some ads did pass and get positive comments. JD Sports, for instance, got the highest appraisal score with an 84% DSC Community Certification and was commended for properly representing young Black culture, Black artists and Black sports stars. Comments included:

“This ad represents the young London black community. The father is a Caribbean man, nice to hear the accent, the clothes, hairstyles and celebrities would be recognized and familiar among Black people in the UK. The slang would especially be recognized in London with young people.”

“Some of the best entertainment and cultural leaders in the community are in this advert and I love to see it.”

We also had to take some criticism for our study (so we’re not just pointing the finger). When we put this up on LinkedIn, some people validly questioned the research. You can see the LinkedIn conversation here. Please do feel free to add to it.

This leads to the main point – this issue is not a clear one, it is nuanced and difficult to approach and always open to criticism and pushback. But we have to keep giving a voice to the consumers who identify within these communities and allow them to be heard.

As creatives, agencies and clients, we also need to be able to look at what we’ve created and see that there is still more work to be done to make work that is authentic and representative – not just at Christmas but all year round – and to take that criticism and turn it into more representative and authentic ads next year.

Here are some thoughts from us on how you can do that. Think of it as a belated Christmas present. (Or a really, really early one).

1. Stop just thinking about casting, think about not just who else is in the room, but about what else is in the room, what’s on the table and how and why those characters might be doing what they are doing, because in most cases it will be slightly different.

2. Ensure you gain diverse consumer research and insight right at the start of your creative process; share things like your strategy and initial ideas with different types of people from different communities and allow them to help you make it grow.

3. Get out of the mindset of doing this all yourselves. People are ready and waiting to help you make the most progressive and creative pieces of work.

4. If you can’t do this for yourselves, look for professional guidance.

If we all start thinking about this now, we can work together to make sure none of next year’s ads appear on Santa’s naughty list and that everyone gets the gift of a representative ad that makes them feel included at Christmas.

Rich Miles is the founder and chief executive of the Diversity Standards Collective.