EFF welcomes Dentsu’s decision to invest of OOH spend on black-owned OOH in SA

12 March 2023

The EFF welcomes Dentsu's decision to invests 30% of OOH (Out-Of-Home) spend to black-owner OOH media business in SA. This is a step forward in the racial transformation of the marketing and advertisement sector in our country.

Over 12 months ago, the EFF made a submission to the South African Human Rights Commission about racist patterns of ownership and spending within the entire advertisement industry. Specifically, we indicated that "within the Out-Of-Home market JC Decaux (Continental), PRIMEDIA Outdoor, Outdoor, Network [Provantage and Ad Outpost dominate 80% of the market.

In essence this is an Old White Boys Club, occupying 80% of the SA OOH market Share, led by a Foreign and Male Owned Company (JC Decaux). We added that "in this sector private big spenders such as Unilever (R2B), Shoprite (1.5B), OUTsurance, Clientele (r 1.1B), GSK (of ENO, Aqua fresh — RI .3B)), Famous Brands (Steers, Debonairs Pizza, Wimpy), Pick n Pay, FNB, Standard Bank are all engaged in anti-black racism... as they pay more for white owned billboards than they do for black owned billboards, regardless of where such a billboard is located, Sandton or Soweto."

Dentsu is the fifth largest international advertising and marketing agency, representing big brands like Absa, Heineken, PEP, Hippo, H&M and AB lnBev. Its annual spend on OOH is over R300 million in South Africa. This means at least R90m will be set aside for black owned OOH.

The EFF calls on all other agencies, including big brands to follow this example. The setting aside of 30% is a good start which must improve over the years until the market share shifts in favour of black owners who are the majority population in terms of South African demographics.

We call on Dentsu to exercise detailed caution as many white owned companies may create false or token BEE companies to undermine this transformation objective.

There should be a mechanism to properly benefit genuine black owned OOH companies.

Finally, we reiterate our call for prices to be balanced across different locations: there are absolutely no grounds for a billboard in Sandton advertising Heineken to be more expensive than the one in Soweto when the audience numbers are the same. This is the true racism of the advertising industry; simply because audiences are white, they tend to be more expensive, even when such whites have the same buying power for the product in question as black people. In addition, many of these products are consumed more in black than white communities, yet there continues to be a false privileging (overpricing) of the white audiences.

Dentsu and all advertisement and marketing agencies should extend the same policy to broadcasters and print media: it must set aside more percentages on black owned radio and newspaper platforms, including the public broadcaster.

Issued by Sinawo Thambo, National Spokesperson, EFF, 13 February 2023