TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/092589/09258900.017

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 5KB | 80 lines

BUSINESS, Page 56

It's a Small World After All

An ethnic rainbow is brightening ads and fashion runways


    The model gazes serenely at the magazine reader from the
country-club cool of a Ralph Lauren ad. Dressed impeccably in a
tweed jacket, silk scarf and elegant suede gloves, she projects
all the dreamy remoteness that is typical of Lauren models, with
one notable difference: she is black.

    It was a long time coming, but an ethnic rainbow is finally
sweeping across the fashion and advertising industries -- and
brightening them considerably. The blond, blue-eyed ideal is out,
diversity is in, and the concept of beauty is growing as wide as
the world. The new cast of faces is appearing not only in ads aimed
at specific ethnic groups but in mainstream advertising as well.
Revlon's Most Unforgettable Woman of 1989, chosen in a search
across the U.S., is Mary Xinh Nguyen, a 20-year-old Vietnamese
American from California. Such companies as Du Pont, Citibank and
Delta Air Lines have populated current ads with a rich variety of
blacks, Asians and Hispanics.

    While many consumers still live in segregated neighborhoods,
integrated ads have become the height of hipness. Reason: they have
a sophisticated, global-village look. "Advertisers don't want to
insult people's intelligence. They are reflecting how the world
is," says James Patterson, chief executive of the ad agency J.
Walter Thompson USA. If an ad features nothing but a herd of
Caucasians, it can appear dated and stiff. The inclusion of a lone
minority-group member has a similar effect. Says Ron Anderson, vice
chairman of the Bozell ad agency: "Ten or 15 years ago, there was
a sense of tokenism. Some advertisers would throw a black or
Hispanic into an ad because they were sensitive to minorities. Now
we use blacks and Hispanics to sell a product."

    From supermodel Suzy Parker in the 1950s to Christie Brinkley
in the early 1980s, fair-skinned models used to dominate
advertising. Most ad experts trace the change to Europe, where
couturiers, notably Givenchy, began employing black women as runway
models. The French fashion magazine Elle helped pioneer the
polyethnic look in its editorial pages, then exported the
philosophy to America when it launched a U.S. edition four years
ago. (Catherine Alain-Bernard, fashion and beauty editor of the
French Elle, says her magazine still gets a few letters from people
complaining about black models and "giving jobs to immigrants.")

    One of the first advertisers to embrace the rainbow look was
Benetton, the Italian knitwear maker, which launched its "United
Colors of Benetton" campaign in 1984. The ads picture handsome
youths of diverse nationalities often standing arm in arm. The
purpose of such ads is not just to appeal to ethnic customers who
might identify with people in the ads but also to pitch an alluring
sentiment of brotherhood. Esprit, a San Francisco-based sportswear
company, went one step further by putting its employees in ads.
Says Esprit spokeswoman Lisa DeNeff: "We sat up and said, `Hey, why
not us?' We had a lot of great-looking folks here. Many were
ethnically different."

    All over the globe, advertising is becoming more multiracial.
Many ads in Japan, which often used to depict blonds because they
represented the Western good life, are populated by blacks, Asians
and Latins. "Japanese consumers now want to see somebody unique and
somebody they can easily empathize with," says Hidehiko Sekizawa,
senior research director for Hakuhodo, Japan's second largest ad
agency. In France the two hottest commercials of the summer, for
Schweppes and Orangina, featured Brazilian music and casts of
brown-eyed, mixed-race beauties.

    Modeling agencies are finding ways to meet the demand for
fresher faces by scouting all over the world and staging more
contests. "If you see a beauty, you don't worry about her color.
The perfectly proportioned features are no longer so important,"
says Ann Veltri, a vice president at Elite Model Management.

    Since consumers want to see real people rather than idols,
advertisers expect the ethnic look to be around for years to come.
"We don't want a colorless, odorless soup," says Guy Taboulay, the
executive creative director in Paris for B.S.B., a U.S.-owned ad
agency. "We want to see national identities and character.
Tomorrow's culture will be made up of different cultures. That will
be its strength."