‘Urban’ Label Misses a Large Swath of Black Consumers

(AdAge.com) — Mention the word “urban” and marketers see a young black man with headphones, fresh sneakers and a slick cellphone, bobbing his head to a hip-hop soundtrack down a graffiti’d city street. That’s the hackneyed image of the African-American consumer portrayed in many campaigns. Marketers that assume “urban” represents the entire African-American population are missing out on other key consumer segments. Segments such as the black single mother, the black gay or lesbian, and the black lower-income earner have been overlooked by marketers and lumped together under the misleading “urban” umbrella. “There is no monolithic blackness,” said Lynne d Johnson, a senior VP at the Advertising Research Foundation. But “if you are not the Ebony or Essence reader, you are underrepresented. There are other segments within the African-American demographic that are not those or hip-hop.”

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