Ethnic faces unrepresented in mainstream ads

A survey released today suggests that ethnic faces including actors from Black, Asian or other minority ethnic groups are under represented in mainstream television adverts.

The data comes IPA, which concluded the following findings:

�ۢ Out of the 34,499 commercials cleared by Clearcast (regulator), 1,845 (5.3%) contain BAME actors, according to the data supplied by agencies when they upload the commercials*

�ۢ 1,667 of those 1,845 commercials (4.8%) have featured BAME actors

�ۢ 715 of those 1,845 commercials (2.1%) have walk-on BAME actors

�ۢ Significant product categories indexing greater than 100 for BAME actors are: household equipment, online retail, property, entertainment and pharmaceutical

�ۢ The worst indexing categories of scale, indexing under 60, are food, motoring, mail order, retail, travel and transport, telecoms, household stores, clothing and household appliances

�ۢ According to the data no BAME actors at all appeared in gardening or household appliance ads, although these are small categories

Says Saad Saraf, Chairman of the IPA�۪s Ethnic Diversity Group and CEO, Media Reach, “I strongly believe that a commercial will appeal more to a diverse audience if it reflects it. So what these latest figures from Clearcast reveal, rather disappointingly, is that commercials are not only under representing the diverse make-up of the UK, of which BAMEs comprise 8%, but that in doing so, they are missing out on an important and rapidly growing revenue stream. I can only urge advertisers to take note and hope that these figures will improve over the coming year.”