Anybody notice an increase in the amount of interracial couples in advertising? It started a few years ago but has really ramped up recently with race/racism being inserted into everything. Also noticing a lot more black people in general in Canadian ads.
I don't have a problem with seeing interracial couples or black people in advertisements but the over-representation is simply over the top and statistically impossible at this point. Black people only make up 3.5% of the Canadian population but it seems like a quarter to half of the people you see in ads are black or an interracial couple often including one black person. Even if every black person was dating outside of their race, we would still only see 3.5% of couples being black interracial, which you almost wouldn't even notice.
I got a look at the behind-the-scenes on this:
I volunteered for a student service on campus a couple years ago. They do advertising across campus and needed a picture of a man and a woman for the advertisement. The coordinator picked me, as well as a girl volunteer, to be part of it. Both white. We take the pictures, and pick out some that we like. A few weeks go by, and eventually the coordinator casually lets me know that they decided to go with a different set of pictures, that includes a black man and a white woman (both volunteers again). After some questioning, the she (the coordinator) revealed that the first pictures had been rejected by the campus advertising committee (or w/e, some university bureaucracy that controls the advertisements on campus), and that they requested a reshoot with more "diversity". So, that's how that came to be.
I can't say I've seen that too often either. Seems fishy.