Open mindedness is the key to success — Marketing and Black Lives Matter
By Rosemary Nabuleera
SALEM, Mass., Feb. 24, 2017 — Marketers need to have an open mind and carry out research if they want the best results, according to, Linda Coleman, a marketing professor at Salem State University (SSU), who spoke to her class on February 14 in the context of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) teach-in on campus..
Prior to class, students were instructed by Coleman to research from the offered links and write an essay on how Black people are victims of marketing malpractice as a result of the preconceived notions that marketers have about that population.
The BLM website states that the movement began “after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was posthumously placed on trial for his own murder and the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the crime he committed. It was a response to the anti-Black racism that permeates our society and also, unfortunately, our movements.”
“Research shows you [marketing students] that there is a lot more information that goes beyond what your perception is,” Coleman said during her Special Topics in Marketing class.
“If you can be open-minded and not defensive or not self conscious and find out what is going on; it might be a slam dunk,” she added.
The SSU website states that “55 faculty members from more than 20 departments” registered to participate in the BLM teach-in between Feb. 13 and Feb. 17.
Also, the registered faculty members had to devote a class period and focus on BLM-related topics; it was an opportunity for the faculty to “intentionally open up conversations about the ways in which Black people in the United States are deprived of basic human rights and dignity in many instances.”
On Thursday, Coleman explained that at one point Jos. A. Bank, a retailer of suits only had a narrow way of thinking, thus the brand wasn’t looking at the fact that women wanted to buy professional clothes. And, because female suits weren’t on the market, professional women started to buy little boys’ suits and jackets to satisfy their needs.
The majority of the students had carried out research on Adweek’s interview with Cynthia Perkins-Roberts, “vice president of diversity marketing and business development for the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau” and students referred back to her interview responses.
The top two misconceptions that Perkins-Roberts list in the interview include the “idea that general-market campaigns work just as well as targeted campaigns to motivate purchases, and that African-Americans have low incomes and lifestyles that are often negatively portrayed in the media.”
Perkins-Roberts explains that marketers think that Blacks speak English and thus there is no need to segment them based on their attitudes or interests. At least one student in the class agreed.
“I am from Barbados and then we have African-Americans,” marketing student Amari Heywood-Gonzalez said in an interview, “but in this country all tend to be grouped together as one, based on whatever we look like.”
Heywood-Gonzalez explained that it is important to segment the Black population since it is broad.
In fact, a Pew Research Center report on Black immigration highlighted that about “nine percent of the United States black population is foreign born.”
The report also notes that black immigrants come from all over the world, with Jamaica leading the Black immigration group by about 18 percent of the 3.8 million.
“I am not black or anything like that, but this is all totally is relevant to me,” student Justin Lamhut said after class.
Lamhut explained that as someone who is majoring in marketing, he learned the importance of doing research and having an open mind.
