I've written about this before on HK.com and if you're wondering where it all came from, KNOCK THE HUSTLE is the source.
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I’m not sure exactly when, but at some point being Black became my full-time job, my career. Being a good copywriter became secondary to being a good Black copywriter. Being a smart marketer became secondary to being an urban marketer. At some point my insights into the Black community and hip-hop became my most valued assets; and after a while nothing else mattered. It wasn’t because I didn’t have value in any other capacity or role. And it wasn’t because I was looking for an easy way out (or in). It was because that’s all they wanted from me: Bosses… Clients… Coworkers… Consumers… Women… They wanted was “Blackness,” or at least a marketable, ownable version of it. Most days I felt like the token black comic on SNL—Give ‘em Blackness. On their terms. For their purpose. For their profit.
Some days I forgot that my experiences were simply par for the course. After all, black folks have always been big business here: Our labor. Our speech. Our styles. Our stories. Our humor. Our music. Our hair. Our skin. Our struggle. Our soul… There’s always been profit in selling and consuming Blackness; it still ranks as one of America’s greatest industries and probably its most lucrative export. My career, especially my time spent in urban marketing, forced me to remember this. It also reminded me that we profit from it the least, if ever at all.
Show ‘Em My Motto!
Backspin to Summer Y2K…
I’m in this brainstorming session for a major soft-drink client: There’s me, a couple VPs, account execs, creative directors, etc., all sitting around a conference table staring at cans and bottles of product. The soda’s image is flat; its market share is slipping. Our assignment: Re-energize the brand; make it hip. Make our core audiences of 12–17 year old and 18–24 year old mainstream kids already thirsty for coolness drink it by the caseload.
Our solution? Black folk.
The gist: While our core audience is white, our client knows what most in the beverage, music, fashion, and entertainment industries have known and utilized for decades: Black people are cool, trendsetters. And if you get black people to do it, most everyone else, in the great American tradition of co-opting black culture will probably do it, too. So the plan is essentially to surround the product with black people, black music and boom—sold to America. In business terms, it’s the O.J. Principle reloaded:
Back in 1968 at the height of the Civil Rights Era as top black sports figures like Jim Brown, Dr. Harry Edwards, Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, et al, are championing civil rights, a rising RB named Orenthal James Simpson who’s just won the Heisman Award publicly distances himself from the movement by claiming it (black civil rights) “isn’t his problem.”1 This public declaration makes him an instant folks hero among many mainstreamers and a cash cow for everyone from ABC and NFL to Hertz to Hollywood.
Over the next 25 years, O.J. Simpson built a multimillion-dollar career of product endorsing, motivational speaking, sports commentating, and even acting, based almost exclusively on being “universal”—black but accepted by mainstream marketers and consumers. He protected his crossover appeal consistently avoiding all things “controversial” or Black (women, civil rights, race, etc.). And until his big trial he was consistently ranked as one of the most beloved black people in America. Companies have been spinning the O.J. Principle ever since. (Many have cited Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Will Smith as the O.J. Principle’s most successful offspring.)
Some days I forgot that my experiences were simply par for the course. After all, black folks have always been big business here: Our labor. Our speech. Our styles. Our stories. Our humor. Our music. Our hair. Our skin. Our struggle. Our soul… There’s always been profit in selling and consuming Blackness; it still ranks as one of America’s greatest industries and probably its most lucrative export. My career, especially my time spent in urban marketing, forced me to remember this. It also reminded me that we profit from it the least, if ever at all.
Backspin to Summer Y2K…
I’m in this brainstorming session for a major soft-drink client: There’s me, a couple VPs, account execs, creative directors, etc., all sitting around a conference table staring at cans and bottles of product. The soda’s image is flat; its market share is slipping. Our assignment: Re-energize the brand; make it hip. Make our core audiences of 12–17 year old and 18–24 year old mainstream kids already thirsty for coolness drink it by the caseload.
Our solution? Black folk.
The gist: While our core audience is white, our client knows what most in the beverage, music, fashion, and entertainment industries have known and utilized for decades: Black people are cool, trendsetters. And if you get black people to do it, most everyone else, in the great American tradition of co-opting black culture will probably do it, too. So the plan is essentially to surround the product with black people, black music and boom—sold to America. In business terms, it’s the O.J. Principle reloaded:
Back in 1968 at the height of the Civil Rights Era as top black sports figures like Jim Brown, Dr. Harry Edwards, Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, et al, are championing civil rights, a rising RB named Orenthal James Simpson who’s just won the Heisman Award publicly distances himself from the movement by claiming it (black civil rights) “isn’t his problem.”1 This public declaration makes him an instant folks hero among many mainstreamers and a cash cow for everyone from ABC and NFL to Hertz to Hollywood.
Over the next 25 years, O.J. Simpson built a multimillion-dollar career of product endorsing, motivational speaking, sports commentating, and even acting, based almost exclusively on being “universal”—black but accepted by mainstream marketers and consumers. He protected his crossover appeal consistently avoiding all things “controversial” or Black (women, civil rights, race, etc.). And until his big trial he was consistently ranked as one of the most beloved black people in America. Companies have been spinning the O.J. Principle ever since. (Many have cited Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Will Smith as the O.J. Principle’s most successful offspring.)
