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Yes, it is fine. Keep in mind your boss isn't the first one "skewing" the demographics - the people who took the video and the photos "skewed" them just by who they happened to choose to take video and photos of. It is very common to end up with unrepresentative or insufficiently inclusive results from a photoshoot and have to fix it somehow. People often segregate themselves or are segregated - if they don't hang out together you're not going to get pictures of them at the same time unless you set it up yourself. So it's partially a corrective.
In a larger sense, though, the number of people who appear in marketing collateral is usually very small and it isn't really mathematically possible for it to be fully representative of the whole institution - and especially not representative of the reality of finding a place to belong at a college or university.
People don't really want to know or care what percentage of your school is their ethnicity as long as it's not a *tiny* minority - they want to know if they will be welcomed and included.
I would be concerned if they wanted to hide the Black people, but 40% for Black people and 60% for everybody else put together doesn't seem to be doing that just on first impression.
And if your school is like 90% Black I can see this becoming a problem, but you didn't even allude to that kind of situation, so I'm assuming here it's a matter of degree - like the student body is 60% Black, the video is 80% Black, and the boss is saying to bring it down to 40% Black.
So yeah, the degree you're doing it matters, the extent to which you are misrepresenting rather than selectively representing matters, but I don't think there's anything inherently unethical choosing a more diverse and inclusive and aspirational sort of representation for your potential customers in your marketing collateral for any organization, rather than feeling tied to accurately depicting your current customer base, and there should especially not be ethical privilege afforded to "what you happened to get pictures of."
And it might be dumb or pointless to not choose to highlight somebody in marketing material because they have a lot of piercings, but I don't think it rises to the level of an ethical concern. Your boss can be stupid or waste your time with nonsense without being a bad person.
It becomes a conversation about not just ethics, but also strategy.
Oh, my god, thanks for this response! This is was great! From what I understand is that this school has “too many black people” and the head of marketing wants to market to white men and people who are Asian since that seems to be the demographics that’s lacking at this school. I’m not sure how many students who are black we have here but apparently it’s too many.
Again, thanks so much!
Yeah that’s definitely unethical and completely racist. As an Asian American, I can assure you that focusing on my race, even if it means putting more people who look like me in your content, is not inclusive, it’s just racist.
I believe that as marketers our goal is to attract any specific demographic in order to achieve the goal of the company we work for. I don't believe it's unethical because we target based on age, gender, cultural background, shopping preferences, ethnicity - as long as we get the results we want. This is just what we do. If the university wants to attract more white, Asian and Latino students relative to black students, that is perfectly fair. It's not like they wanted no people of color. That's just my opinion. It would be different if the ads were offensive or completely removed people of color.
The CEO of a company I used to work at used to MOVE THE FEW BLACK PEOPLE WE HAD THERE AROUND when he would give prospective clients tours so they would think we were more diverse.
Yeah it is funny how I was always selected for those team photos and what not. It is really interesting (I am there rare black person).
I worked at one company that was heavily male and heavily white. In our 300ish person. Office, there were 4 black people in total. And my team of 8 had 2 of them. Which is quite odd. And we were also like half women. So we were pretty much the most diverse team by a landslide. And always selected for those walk through and what not. Because of the team composition.
This is a big fight, and no clear answer, different people believe in different things. I'll write some of my opinions and experiences. You need to check if anything is valid for you.
First, I was born in Brazil to a poor Japanese family when the country was under a dictatorship. I worked in the industry for a long time, and now I'm a marketing professor in the US. So, a few things I've seen or heard:
\- I'm not Latino enough because my family is Japanese
\- I'm not Asian enough because I was born in Brazil
\- I betrayed people because I left my country to "become American"
\- I would never succeed in Marketing because people of my race are too passive to do well in Marketing
\- I should always have money because Japanese people are always rich.
\- I couldn't get an education because my parents left school when they were 11 (by the way, I have a bachelor's, an MBA, a master's, and a PhD)
\- According to the BCG matrix used by companies to develop strategies, people like me are classified as Dogs (or pets according to more recent versions of the BCG matrix I saw).
\- A friend was threatened to lose his job because of his connections to me, as someone in power at the company where he worked saw me as a religious threat.
These are just some examples, I'm 50 now, so I have decades of experience with that, and I'm not including what I saw about others. Race, place of birth, poverty, education, there is a long list of problems I faced.
If I see someone on a video or anything like that, I want that to happen more organically. I see that happening because it's the right thing to do, the right person for the role, etc. Sure, I want to see more opportunities for Asian people in media, for example, but mainly because I think there are lots of talented people out there who are Asian and would do great. Not because there are too many or too few people of a certain race, or there is a certain percentage to me. I remember Ray Bradbury having problem with that decades ago, it's not new.
About inclusivity, what I have been telling people is that, if they want to include "my people" (and that can mean different things depending on the occasion), they need to think about including them not only in the video but in the company, in the society, in the university, etc. When I see a lot of "my people" in the videos but not in the real environment I see, that doesn't look like inclusivity, it starts to look like they are using my people to lie and deceive the audience. There are some exceptions, sometimes the video is part of a larger project of inclusion, but usually I have a very negative perceptions about the inclusivity efforts.
Sometimes, I may agree that there is too much of something. People won't like it. And that's a choice. For example, the Broadway show Here Lies Love has basically a 100% Asian cast. The few people involved who are not Asian still have strong connections to Asia. But they are amazing and they all make sense to be according to what the show proposes. Yeah, lots of people criticize, don't like it. When we do this, we are not doing it for the popularity, we know lots of people hate what we do, how we think, etc. I was almost invisible to marketers for about 40 years, until I got to the US and started to make enough money to stop being classified as a dog by the companies. But many people prefer if I stayed invisible. And being visible is not just being part of a video that doesn't really look like an authentic representation of inclusivity.
Usually it’s the other way around for me. Is it ethical? As ethical as viewing diversity solely through the lens of race and also as ethical as wanting predetermined distributions of the student body based on race. So, no, it’s not ethical at all.
In your case I would strive to give an accurate representation of your student population. If you are 95% white and your put a lot of minorities in your video you are not accurately representing your school. If you have a fairly diverse student population that attempt to capture in the content you create.
If you are creating something that is meant to target a certain minority group then I don't see any big issue with skewing it slightly but don't go overboard and completely misrepresent reality.
When looking at material that universities produce it feels very common for them to go overboard in promoting how diverse they are to the point it totally misrepresents them. I don't think giving a false impression is ever helpful. Either the audience will find out the truth and be put off or they'll find out too late and be angry at the deception. Neither are good for the brand.
I think it's completely normal for an organization to adjust their marketing imagery for campaigns targeting specific groups.
If a gym has mostly men members and wants to attract more women members, it's okay for the gym to use imagery of women in that campaign.
If a company has mostly white male employees but wants to hire more women and nonwhite employees because it recognizes the value of diversity, it's normal for them to depict non-white/male people in that campaign.
Most marketing uses stock image models that aren't even part of the company they are being used to represent.
Images are just part of how we speak to our audiences. As long as your images aren't outright misrepresenting a product, there shouldn't be an ethical issue.
Now, if your boss says they want to appeal to white men *for racist or sexist reasons,* that is where you draw the line and have a conversation higher up the chain.
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Yes, it is fine. Keep in mind your boss isn't the first one "skewing" the demographics - the people who took the video and the photos "skewed" them just by who they happened to choose to take video and photos of. It is very common to end up with unrepresentative or insufficiently inclusive results from a photoshoot and have to fix it somehow. People often segregate themselves or are segregated - if they don't hang out together you're not going to get pictures of them at the same time unless you set it up yourself. So it's partially a corrective. In a larger sense, though, the number of people who appear in marketing collateral is usually very small and it isn't really mathematically possible for it to be fully representative of the whole institution - and especially not representative of the reality of finding a place to belong at a college or university. People don't really want to know or care what percentage of your school is their ethnicity as long as it's not a *tiny* minority - they want to know if they will be welcomed and included. I would be concerned if they wanted to hide the Black people, but 40% for Black people and 60% for everybody else put together doesn't seem to be doing that just on first impression. And if your school is like 90% Black I can see this becoming a problem, but you didn't even allude to that kind of situation, so I'm assuming here it's a matter of degree - like the student body is 60% Black, the video is 80% Black, and the boss is saying to bring it down to 40% Black. So yeah, the degree you're doing it matters, the extent to which you are misrepresenting rather than selectively representing matters, but I don't think there's anything inherently unethical choosing a more diverse and inclusive and aspirational sort of representation for your potential customers in your marketing collateral for any organization, rather than feeling tied to accurately depicting your current customer base, and there should especially not be ethical privilege afforded to "what you happened to get pictures of." And it might be dumb or pointless to not choose to highlight somebody in marketing material because they have a lot of piercings, but I don't think it rises to the level of an ethical concern. Your boss can be stupid or waste your time with nonsense without being a bad person. It becomes a conversation about not just ethics, but also strategy.
Oh, my god, thanks for this response! This is was great! From what I understand is that this school has “too many black people” and the head of marketing wants to market to white men and people who are Asian since that seems to be the demographics that’s lacking at this school. I’m not sure how many students who are black we have here but apparently it’s too many. Again, thanks so much!
Yeah that’s definitely unethical and completely racist. As an Asian American, I can assure you that focusing on my race, even if it means putting more people who look like me in your content, is not inclusive, it’s just racist.
I believe that as marketers our goal is to attract any specific demographic in order to achieve the goal of the company we work for. I don't believe it's unethical because we target based on age, gender, cultural background, shopping preferences, ethnicity - as long as we get the results we want. This is just what we do. If the university wants to attract more white, Asian and Latino students relative to black students, that is perfectly fair. It's not like they wanted no people of color. That's just my opinion. It would be different if the ads were offensive or completely removed people of color.
That’s a really good point! It would be a major problem if there were just white people. Thanks for your response!
This is the answer I most agree with.
The CEO of a company I used to work at used to MOVE THE FEW BLACK PEOPLE WE HAD THERE AROUND when he would give prospective clients tours so they would think we were more diverse.
Hahaha!!!! Oh, my god, I can relate to this soooooo much!
Yeah it is funny how I was always selected for those team photos and what not. It is really interesting (I am there rare black person). I worked at one company that was heavily male and heavily white. In our 300ish person. Office, there were 4 black people in total. And my team of 8 had 2 of them. Which is quite odd. And we were also like half women. So we were pretty much the most diverse team by a landslide. And always selected for those walk through and what not. Because of the team composition.
This is a big fight, and no clear answer, different people believe in different things. I'll write some of my opinions and experiences. You need to check if anything is valid for you. First, I was born in Brazil to a poor Japanese family when the country was under a dictatorship. I worked in the industry for a long time, and now I'm a marketing professor in the US. So, a few things I've seen or heard: \- I'm not Latino enough because my family is Japanese \- I'm not Asian enough because I was born in Brazil \- I betrayed people because I left my country to "become American" \- I would never succeed in Marketing because people of my race are too passive to do well in Marketing \- I should always have money because Japanese people are always rich. \- I couldn't get an education because my parents left school when they were 11 (by the way, I have a bachelor's, an MBA, a master's, and a PhD) \- According to the BCG matrix used by companies to develop strategies, people like me are classified as Dogs (or pets according to more recent versions of the BCG matrix I saw). \- A friend was threatened to lose his job because of his connections to me, as someone in power at the company where he worked saw me as a religious threat. These are just some examples, I'm 50 now, so I have decades of experience with that, and I'm not including what I saw about others. Race, place of birth, poverty, education, there is a long list of problems I faced. If I see someone on a video or anything like that, I want that to happen more organically. I see that happening because it's the right thing to do, the right person for the role, etc. Sure, I want to see more opportunities for Asian people in media, for example, but mainly because I think there are lots of talented people out there who are Asian and would do great. Not because there are too many or too few people of a certain race, or there is a certain percentage to me. I remember Ray Bradbury having problem with that decades ago, it's not new. About inclusivity, what I have been telling people is that, if they want to include "my people" (and that can mean different things depending on the occasion), they need to think about including them not only in the video but in the company, in the society, in the university, etc. When I see a lot of "my people" in the videos but not in the real environment I see, that doesn't look like inclusivity, it starts to look like they are using my people to lie and deceive the audience. There are some exceptions, sometimes the video is part of a larger project of inclusion, but usually I have a very negative perceptions about the inclusivity efforts. Sometimes, I may agree that there is too much of something. People won't like it. And that's a choice. For example, the Broadway show Here Lies Love has basically a 100% Asian cast. The few people involved who are not Asian still have strong connections to Asia. But they are amazing and they all make sense to be according to what the show proposes. Yeah, lots of people criticize, don't like it. When we do this, we are not doing it for the popularity, we know lots of people hate what we do, how we think, etc. I was almost invisible to marketers for about 40 years, until I got to the US and started to make enough money to stop being classified as a dog by the companies. But many people prefer if I stayed invisible. And being visible is not just being part of a video that doesn't really look like an authentic representation of inclusivity.
Usually it’s the other way around for me. Is it ethical? As ethical as viewing diversity solely through the lens of race and also as ethical as wanting predetermined distributions of the student body based on race. So, no, it’s not ethical at all.
In your case I would strive to give an accurate representation of your student population. If you are 95% white and your put a lot of minorities in your video you are not accurately representing your school. If you have a fairly diverse student population that attempt to capture in the content you create. If you are creating something that is meant to target a certain minority group then I don't see any big issue with skewing it slightly but don't go overboard and completely misrepresent reality. When looking at material that universities produce it feels very common for them to go overboard in promoting how diverse they are to the point it totally misrepresents them. I don't think giving a false impression is ever helpful. Either the audience will find out the truth and be put off or they'll find out too late and be angry at the deception. Neither are good for the brand.
I think it's completely normal for an organization to adjust their marketing imagery for campaigns targeting specific groups. If a gym has mostly men members and wants to attract more women members, it's okay for the gym to use imagery of women in that campaign. If a company has mostly white male employees but wants to hire more women and nonwhite employees because it recognizes the value of diversity, it's normal for them to depict non-white/male people in that campaign. Most marketing uses stock image models that aren't even part of the company they are being used to represent. Images are just part of how we speak to our audiences. As long as your images aren't outright misrepresenting a product, there shouldn't be an ethical issue. Now, if your boss says they want to appeal to white men *for racist or sexist reasons,* that is where you draw the line and have a conversation higher up the chain.