It wasn’t so long ago that advertisers completely ignored the needs of black consumers. The notoriously all-white profession did so either because they think about black people as buyers, they didn’t believe in black purchasing power or they assumed that any product could be marketed to blacks if you simply swapped out white models and put in black ones.
We’ve come a long way since then.
As last week’s opening of the movie Black Panther demonstrates, black people will invest in products—especially when they feel represented by them. The movie smashed records, making over $400 million dollars in its opening weekend. Of course, not all moviegoers who went to see the film were black. But it was black people who made a point to specifically support the film and dressed in African fabrics, don elaborate natural hairstyles and wear pro-black clothing. It has been a worldwide event during which black people have been able to celebrate a film with a nearly all-black cast and diverse representations of blackness. To that end, black folks have been more than willing to spend their money on it and its accompanying paraphernalia.
As Black Enterprise notes, a new report out by Nielsen says that this is a trend that isn’t likely to end anytime soon. According to the report, black dollars are increasingly important to brands—with social media playing a huge role in marketing.
The seismic shift in how important black dollars have become is credited to social media and the vocal and voluminous online entity known as Black Twitter. More African American consumers are demanding products and marketing that embrace diversity without pandering and that are culturally relevant.
The report reveals that black spending power has reached $1.2 trillion. In some markets, black consumers have a considerable spending footprint. Although African Americans make up only 14% of the U.S. population, they spend $573 million on personal hygiene items; $810 million on bottled water; and $151 million in the luxury non-essential products market (which includes items such as watches and fragrances).
Nielsen has figured out and articulated what black people have actually known for decades: we spend money. Lots of it. And we buy a variety of products—from hair care to cosmetics to clothing to food and beverages. Given that, it would certainly work to the benefit of companies and advertisers to understand what we buy and target us as potential and ongoing customers.
[According to Cheryl Grace, a senior vice president at Nielsen], “these figures show that investment by multinational conglomerates in R&D to develop products and marketing that appeal to diverse consumers is, indeed, paying off handsomely.”
Smart companies will purposefully target African American customers, it says in the Nielsen study. Black consumer choices are increasingly becoming mainstream.
It’s not just that black consumers’ choices are becoming mainstream, but in fact, it’s that black consumers are often setting the trends and establishing the bar for what is popular.
Though this particular report focuses on black consumers as a whole, Nielsen also did a separate report in the fall of 2017 which focused on black women as consumers. Again, the buying power of black women can’t be underestimated. And black women aren’t just buying from businesses, but also starting and running their own.
African-American women’s consumer preferences and brand affinities are resonating across the U.S. mainstream, driving total Black spending power toward a record $1.5 trillion by 2021, according to African-American Women: Our Science, Her Magic, a Nielsen report released today.
Self-made and self-reliant, the number of businesses majority-owned by Black women grew 67% between 2007 and 2012, more than all women combined. The latest U.S. Census figures show African-American women have majority ownership in more than 1.5 million businesses with over $42 billion in sales.
This is really good and important news. And it’s worth noting that this tremendous growth happened during the tenure of America’s first black president. Of course, we can’t give credit to Obama for everything—and indeed how black America did during his years in office is nuanced and often controversial for sure. In fact, a certain Republican campaigned for office in 2016 by saying that blacks did worse than ever under Obama’s watch. But facts don’t lie. Black buying power is at an all-time high and black people are leading the way by influencing mainstream culture. Likewise, black women, in particular, are harnessing the power of social media to drive product development, brand loyalty and contribute to their entrepreneurial success.
As Cheryl Grace says: “Black women have strong life-affirming values that spill over into everything they do. The celebration of their power and beauty is reflected in what they buy, watch and listen to, and people outside their communities find it inspiring.” This is why recent calls to “trust black women” have been so resonant. Black women know what we are doing. The same could be said for the black community as a whole. Clearly, our mark in the economy and brand world can’t be overlooked. And while none of this is a fix-all for all the racial injustice in the country (and world), listening to our needs and trends, marketing to us and representing us is a brilliant start.