Trendspotting
Back in 1997, one of our clients, Wrigley’s gum was exploring a “youthful, more urban” image. One of our account folks sets up a meeting where an expert on black youth culture would tell us what’s hot and relevant in the black community. I thought this was a waste of time for obvious reasons, but it was a mandatory meeting so I went. When I hit conference room, it’s me, one other black exec, plus a dozen or so white media, account, and creative folks, plus a young black teenager named LeAlan Jones.
LeAlan, his friend Lloyd Newman plus then-NPR producer David Isay had recently dropped Our America, a stunning Peabody Award-winning audio documentary, which also became a book and a movie of the same name. It chronicled LeAlan and Lloyd’s lives in the Cabrini Green housing project plus the murder of this kid named “Yummy.”
In the early 1990s Yummy, an 8-year-old who’s real name was Eric Morse, was thrown out of a project window by two kids not much older than him. Eric’s murder made national news. Every pundit and politician came out of the woodwork spouting theories and moral outrage. Conservatives blamed Black music and failed liberal social programs. Liberals blamed conservatives for cutting social programs… It was a circus. Anyway, one of our account execs heard about LeAlan from someone who knew someone who knew someone at NPR who brought him in.
So we tune in as LeAlan starts telling us about his life and what he and his friends like to do. Listening to him talk, I think LeAlan felt his big reason for being there was so businessfolks could learn about his community. But we were on cultural safari and just playing him for angles to push product. As he spoke, we feverishly took notes hoping to disseminate what he was saying into some sort of psychographic consumer profile (TV viewing habits, spending habits, what ‘they’ wear…)
Eventually, one of our researchers asks him to focus on music. In a weird way I remember feeling ignored and irritated so I jumped in and asked him if he liked Boogie Down Productions or whoever I was into at the time. He said, “Nah, that’s old stuff. We into Wu-Tang now.”
Wu-Tang?!
Faces frown. What’s a “Wu-Ta—?” You could hear the room swell with smirks and creaks from old necks craning to relate. By then, Wu were living legends and still riding high on 36 Chambers, Meth’s Tical, Raekwon’s “…Only Built 4 Cuban Linx,” plus Ghost’s Ironman. But as far as hip-hop went, my coworkers were still waiting for the next Beastie Boys joint to drop. So LeAlan explains Wu-Tang, plus a few other artists. They start fawning over him like Stockard Channing did Will Smith in Six Degrees of Separation. After another hour or so of picking his brain, LeAlan leaves.
For days on end, everyone that was in the meeting acts like they’d just returned from the Peace Corps. They start opining about the state of black youth and parroting LeAlan, which meant everyone saying “raw” and “real” 25 times a day, 5 days a week. And of course, everyone was coming up with their own honorary Wu-Tang names such as Old Dirty Diapers and Masta ClapOff Beat. (Ah, the joys of white liberal enlightenment…)
Also, over the next couple weeks, we held several brainstorming sessions to target the Yurban (young urban) audience. The most annoying part of the sessions was that whenever I threw out an idea or offered my perspective, someone would cut in with, “Well that’s not what LeAlan said,” or “Didn’t he say they wouldn’t respond to that kind of stuff?”
It was then I realized that I was more than just a little jealous of LeAlan. All my ideas were being held up to what they believed his standards were. Ironically I’d worked really hard at this place to ensure that my color had as little as possible with my ability to do with my job. Yet, this time it had everything to do with it; and now I wasn’t black enough. (Plus, I was too old—I was around 24 then and LeAlan must’ve been 15, maybe 16 then.)
Out of our 150-plus employees less than 10 were black; few had kids. “Mary,” one of 2 black VPs—had a couple sons, both around LeAlan’s age. But they didn’t count because they came from pretty stable homes and therefore weren’t “typical enough.” “Grant,” our Chief Creative Officer had a couple daughters around LeAlan’s age but he lived in the suburbs so his kids didn’t count, either. None of us fit into our white colleagues’ little box of what blackness was. Only LeAlan did. Plus, LeAlan was theirs—they discovered him; they could take credit for anything he brought to the table, therefore his opinion mattered most.
The funny thing was that outside of LeAlan, most of my coworkers had no black friends. Thru business and family they all knew plenty of teens and young folks, just not any Black ones. Sure, some of our females execs had their occasional jungle fever trysts, but that was just sex. As for real black friends, like the ones you tell your parents about (or that you’re not just using for sex), they had none.
It almost goes without saying that when it came to reaching any other group, we did more research. We had focus groups and talked to as many people as we could to at least get a rough sketch of that particular consumer group. But not in this case. This time it was just Black kids. And if you know one black kid, you know ‘em all.
LeAlan, his friend Lloyd Newman plus then-NPR producer David Isay had recently dropped Our America, a stunning Peabody Award-winning audio documentary, which also became a book and a movie of the same name. It chronicled LeAlan and Lloyd’s lives in the Cabrini Green housing project plus the murder of this kid named “Yummy.”
So we tune in as LeAlan starts telling us about his life and what he and his friends like to do. Listening to him talk, I think LeAlan felt his big reason for being there was so businessfolks could learn about his community. But we were on cultural safari and just playing him for angles to push product. As he spoke, we feverishly took notes hoping to disseminate what he was saying into some sort of psychographic consumer profile (TV viewing habits, spending habits, what ‘they’ wear…)
Eventually, one of our researchers asks him to focus on music. In a weird way I remember feeling ignored and irritated so I jumped in and asked him if he liked Boogie Down Productions or whoever I was into at the time. He said, “Nah, that’s old stuff. We into Wu-Tang now.”
Wu-Tang?!
Faces frown. What’s a “Wu-Ta—?” You could hear the room swell with smirks and creaks from old necks craning to relate. By then, Wu were living legends and still riding high on 36 Chambers, Meth’s Tical, Raekwon’s “…Only Built 4 Cuban Linx,” plus Ghost’s Ironman. But as far as hip-hop went, my coworkers were still waiting for the next Beastie Boys joint to drop. So LeAlan explains Wu-Tang, plus a few other artists. They start fawning over him like Stockard Channing did Will Smith in Six Degrees of Separation. After another hour or so of picking his brain, LeAlan leaves.
For days on end, everyone that was in the meeting acts like they’d just returned from the Peace Corps. They start opining about the state of black youth and parroting LeAlan, which meant everyone saying “raw” and “real” 25 times a day, 5 days a week. And of course, everyone was coming up with their own honorary Wu-Tang names such as Old Dirty Diapers and Masta ClapOff Beat. (Ah, the joys of white liberal enlightenment…)
Also, over the next couple weeks, we held several brainstorming sessions to target the Yurban (young urban) audience. The most annoying part of the sessions was that whenever I threw out an idea or offered my perspective, someone would cut in with, “Well that’s not what LeAlan said,” or “Didn’t he say they wouldn’t respond to that kind of stuff?”
It was then I realized that I was more than just a little jealous of LeAlan. All my ideas were being held up to what they believed his standards were. Ironically I’d worked really hard at this place to ensure that my color had as little as possible with my ability to do with my job. Yet, this time it had everything to do with it; and now I wasn’t black enough. (Plus, I was too old—I was around 24 then and LeAlan must’ve been 15, maybe 16 then.)
Out of our 150-plus employees less than 10 were black; few had kids. “Mary,” one of 2 black VPs—had a couple sons, both around LeAlan’s age. But they didn’t count because they came from pretty stable homes and therefore weren’t “typical enough.” “Grant,” our Chief Creative Officer had a couple daughters around LeAlan’s age but he lived in the suburbs so his kids didn’t count, either. None of us fit into our white colleagues’ little box of what blackness was. Only LeAlan did. Plus, LeAlan was theirs—they discovered him; they could take credit for anything he brought to the table, therefore his opinion mattered most.
The funny thing was that outside of LeAlan, most of my coworkers had no black friends. Thru business and family they all knew plenty of teens and young folks, just not any Black ones. Sure, some of our females execs had their occasional jungle fever trysts, but that was just sex. As for real black friends, like the ones you tell your parents about (or that you’re not just using for sex), they had none.
It almost goes without saying that when it came to reaching any other group, we did more research. We had focus groups and talked to as many people as we could to at least get a rough sketch of that particular consumer group. But not in this case. This time it was just Black kids. And if you know one black kid, you know ‘em all.
The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else.
The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.
—Whitney M. Young Jr., Civil Rights Leader (1921-1971)
The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.
—Whitney M. Young Jr., Civil Rights Leader (1921-1971)
