While getting my feet wet in the world of Afican-American advertising and marketing I am coming across various articles relevant to all targeted and “urban” markets.  I just love the fact that urban means black and latino, but not quite Asian or other targeted markets.   Before going any further, I must admit growing up the ads I saw that were targeted at African-Americans should’ve been offensive but was just funny to me and my friends.  These ads usually contained some smiling and a lot of singing and dancing.  Which is fine if its works but I didn’t need all of that to convince me have my parents buy me a happy meal, I already wanted one anyway….Ok so, since the singing and dancing is offensive when doing it for the sole reason of appeasing black folks, how do you target an African-American audience effectively?   I mean in this country there is such a thin line between what is considered offensive and what is acceptable when referring to black audiences how can you target them without coming under fire.  Atleast in the Hispanic market you can target with the use of language and culture.  So in order to target blacks do advertisers have to do that little extra and add some cliche ebonics phrase like “You go girl” or “I’m gonna tell my momma” and ghettoize their ad.  Or can they just use something as simple as the music in the background to dictate the tone of the ad.  I have no idea and am still learning so I will get back to you…

Eric Robertson, Developer

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