When did U.S. automobile ads start to display more racial diversity?

(EXPANDED FROM 8/25/2021)

A few years ago Paul Niedermeyer (2021) wondered whether a 1961 Oldsmobile marketing image displayed people of color. The short answer is “no,” which we will talk about later in this story. But first I would like to offer an overview of when advertising began to better reflect the racial diversity of the U.S. car-buying public.

The automotive history books I have access to appear to be remarkably quiet about this subject. For example, The Automobile and American Life quite rightly quoted Marshall McLuhan’s view that historians “will one day discover that the ads of our times are the richest and most faithful daily reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities” (Heitmann, 2018; p. 72). Yet the index to the second edition of this otherwise wide-ranging book only references a discussion of gender roles in advertising.

What then can we find in the wild west of the Internet? Let’s start with an article from Business Insider, which discussed “20 Ads That Changed How We Think About Race In America.” Jim Edwards (2013) noted that through the 1940s, ads tended to only include people who appeared to be white. And when African Americans were pictured, they were “consistently presented as domestics.”

Demographic changes get attention of automakers

The end of World War II helped to spur dramatic changes across American society. This included an increasingly diverse middle class in the wake of Blacks migrating from the rural south to northern industrial states.

“Automotive companies took note of the changes happening during this time and sought to include more diversity in their marketing strategies,” according to Robert Tate (2020).

Also see ‘Did African-American car buyers save Cadillac?’

For example, in 1957 Chrysler began using African American female models in their advertising. Tate added that Chrysler was one of the first companies to advertise in Ebony magazine. Other automakers followed suit.

Studebaker illustrated how the industry would increasingly narrowcast its marketing. A 1960 Lark ad published in Ebony included Black models (Tate, 2020). However, a brochure photo using the same car, in the same pose, with the same background swapped out the Black models for white models.

Automakers cautious in adding diversity to ads

Progress was sometimes overshadowed by cringeworthy moments. As a case in point, the 1963 Chevrolet Corvette image shown at the top of this post is arguably a throwback to the days of “portraying African Americans almost exclusively in positions of servitude or inferiority, as props in ads aimed at white audiences” (Cruz, 2015).

Perhaps partly because of the rise of the civil rights movement, advertisers began to increasingly draw upon African Americans. One example was the 1968 ad campaign for the Chevrolet Camaro, which included both Black and white models (see above).

In the 1970s the comedian Bill Cosby was a spokesperson for a succession of corporations, including Ford. In addition, baseball star Reggie Jackson was featured in Volkswagen advertising (Tate, 2020).

Lenika Cruz (2015) noted that the “goal was twofold for corporations: to keep up with the times, and to broaden their potential consumer base.”

Also see ‘1953-70 Chevrolet Corvette ads gingerly showed changing gender roles’

Cruze (2015) added that corporations could be cautious in increasing the racial diversity of their marketing. “Advertisers knew empirically that African Americans were more likely to buy a product when they saw themselves reflected in ads — so targeted advertising made sense. But agencies also worried that products would become ‘branded black,’ losing them their white consumers as a result. This turned out to be a misguided fear. Demographic targeting continued to flourish, and by the end of the (1970s), blacks made up around 12 percent of models in commercials, compared to 3 percent in the mid-1960s.”

What about other racial minorities? Cruz (2015) noted that during the 1970s “advertisers took depictions of African American more seriously” but other minorities were not represented “largely because they had no significant spending power.”

How did these efforts translate into car sales to African Americans? If we fast forward to 2010, the automotive brands most popular with Blacks were mostly foreign. In order of most popular: Toyota, Ford, Chevrolet, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, Dodge, GMC and Volkswagen (Auto Remarketing, 2021).

Bob Zienstra, Toyota’s head of U.S. marketing, stated that the company was No. 1 with minority car buyers — African Americans as well as Latinos and Asian Americans — partly because “every word, every image, the background, the storyline, the voice over, the music — everything is unique to that market” (Glinton, 2011).

Now, about that 1961 Oldsmobile marketing image

Let’s return to the marketing image posted by Niedermeyer (2021). I think it safe to say that the people shown are white. This is for two reasons. First, an Oldsmobile brochure has the same picture sans the background tree. The skin tone of the people is much lighter.

Second, Niedermeyer’s image can be made to more closely match the color tones of the brochure image when put into a photo-editing program. This leads me to believe that his image was either printed in a way that made the colors darker, or the passage of time has distorted the original colors. Or both.

I have found that as automotive marketing literature ages, it can often get darker, muddier and even yellowish in tone. That’s why most of the images Indie Auto has taken from brochures and ads have been “edited.” I may not be able to completely match the image’s original colors, but I can usually get within the ballpark.

NOTES:

This story was originally posted Aug. 25, 2021 and expanded on Aug. 16, 2023. Indie Auto follows The New York Times’ approach of capitalizing Black and lower-casing white (Bauder, 2020; Coleman, 2020).

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RE:SOURCES

• Auto Remarketing; 2021. “Which Brands Most Attract African-American Buyers?” Posted April 27.
• Bauder, David; 2020. “AP says it will capitalize Black but not white.” AP. Posted July 20.
• Coleman, Nancy; 2020. “Why We’re Capitalizing Black.” The New York Times (subscription required). Posted July 5.
• Cruz, Lenika; 2015. “‘Dinnertimin’ and ‘No Tipping’: How Advertisers Targeted Black Consumers in the 1970s.” The Atlantic. Posted June 7.
• Edwards, Jim; 2013. “20 Ads That Changed How We Think About Race In America.” Business Insider. Posted Feb. 11.
• Glinton, Sonari; 2011. “Toyota Steers Ads To Bring In More Minority Buyers.” NPR. Posted June 30.
• Heitmann, John; 2018. The Automobile and American Life. Second edition. McFarland & Co., Jeferson, North Carolina.
• Niedermeyer, Paul; 2021. “Vintage Rendering: 1961 Olds Dynamic 88 Convertible – Are These Persons Of Color or Is This What Happens When You Ride In An Open Convertible Too Long?” Curbside Classic. Posted Aug. 25.
• Tate, Robert; 2020. “A History of African Americans in Auto Advertising From 1957.” Motor Cities. Posted Feb. 5.

ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:

• autohistorypreservationsociety.org: Chevrolet Camaro (1968); Oldsmobile (1961); Pontiac Bonneville (1971)
• oldcaradvertising.com: Plymouth (1940)
• oldcarbrochures.org: Dodge Challenger (1972); Ford (1975)