There are few marketing and advertising terms as meaningless, confusing, and loaded as “urban”. “Urban” is hollow, false, and impersonal code-language and it’s time to retire the word from the marketing and advertising lexicon.
The term’s origins are up for debate but “urban” as a marketing device seems to have gained its cultural foothold in the late-1970s and early-1980s at the influential Black radio stations WHUR in Washington DC and WBLS in New York City. Each station used the word for very different reasons. WHUR used the term as a race-masking device to secure more advertisers while WBLS’ iconic air personality Frankie Crocker used the term to describe a colorblind and eclectic cosmopolitan mix of bourgeois music styles rooted in R&B. One was a means to obscure and the other was a means to broaden.
Although Frankie Crocker’s intention was a noble and forward-thinking categorization to help better target the shared multicultural personality of late-1970s New York City, WHUR’s race-masking intention is what gained more traction nationally. Using a vague term like “urban” meant never having to call yourself Black. It sounded sophisticated. City – not country. And being vague made it easier to attract brand and Madison Avenue dollars. In turn, it made brands and advertisers (read: Whites) more comfortable to not have to use explicit race language. All part of our national shame of avoiding honest discussions about race.
Ever since, “urban” has been used euphemistically by brands and agencies to categorize Blacks, hip-hop fans, young city sophisticates, and people of color. The term is so confusing that it means very different things to very different agencies and brands.
I say it’s time to stop. It’s 2009. We have a President who is Black. Hip-Hop has been one of the major driving forces of popular culture for the last 15 years. And today’s Millennials have grown up in a multicultural, polyglot, mashup society never before seen in the United States.
It’s time we start treating cultures and demographics with respect. If it’s the African-American demo you seek. Say so. If it’s the hip-hop demo you seek. Say so. If it’s the people of color demo you seek. Say so. If it’s mashup teens. Say so. Just stop with the language influenced by generational discomforts.
We can do better.
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