The Christmas ads that did and didn’t resonate with the Black community in the United Kingdom.

Cheers adgrunts, I hope you're knee-deep in wrapping paper&ribbons, Christmas party invites, and have found all the perfect gifts that you want to give this year. My favorite part of Christmas is hunting for "the perfect gift", which can be difficult - but not nearly as hard as making the "perfect Christmas advert".

Now, the Diversity Standards Collective (DSC) has just done research on this year's Christmas ads. 

Using its Certification ad testing tool, the organisation tested 12 Christmas ads featuring Black and mixed raced casts. The new tool asked members of the Black community from across the UK if they thought these ads were "authentic or representative" of their community to gain qualitative and high-quality solution-based feedback to help change content for the better.

The research found that tokenism, negative stereotyping and inauthentic representation of the festive season is still a huge part of creativity and casting in current Christmas advertising.

The testing found that only 5 out of 12 ads scored more than 75% and passed, but that the other 7 were not seen to be representative or authentic.

Well, that's not great results. So which ads scored well, and which ones did poorly?

Here is the list:

 

#1 DSC Community CERTIFIED (84%)  JD Sports ‘King of the Game’

#2 DSC Community CERTIFIED (82%)  H. Samuel ‘Unwrap the Sparkle’

#3 DSC Community CERTIFIED (81%)  Boots ‘#Joyforall’

4   DSC Community CERTIFIED (80%)  O2 ‘The Snowgran’ 

5   DSC Community CERTIFIED (76%)  Very ‘ Gifts for all your Christmases’

6.  DSC Community FAILED (74%)  Disney ‘The Gift’

7   DSC Community FAILED (63%)  Argos ‘They’re coming. Be ready’

8   DSC Community FAILED (69%)  Tesco ‘The Christmas Party’

9   DSC Community FAILED (68%)  Sainsbury’s ‘Once upon a pud’

10 DSC Community FAILED (69%)  The National Lottery ‘A Christmas Love Story’

11 DSC Community FAILED (64%). Lidl ‘The Story of the bear’

12 DSC Community FAILED (57%) Shelter ‘Brave Face’

Conclusion? The main finding of the research is that tokenism is still rife in advertising. Unsurprising. And here is exactly how it was done.

While agencies and clients are beginning to feature Black and mixed-race people in their ads, there is not enough thought put into the nuances of why they are in those ads in the first place or the lived experiences of those communities. For example, feedback from the community on the Sainsbury’s ad featuring Alison Hammond as a Queen