Black Panther: How Appealing The Right Way To Culture Is Essential Ethics In Marketing

The Marvel Studio movie Black Panther has become a box office success — $1 billion at the box office and 7 Academy Award nominations. But it also demonstrates how marketing with cultural clues properly expressed can be applied in appealing to customer personas.

Marketers usually identify persona through age, gender, marital status, income, education, and location. But as personalization and tech are embraced in marketing, persona also means understanding the values that stem from culture.

Thus cultural touchstone such as Black Panther can inspire interests from the segment that holds those values in high esteem. A savvy approach to such touchstones can lead to sales and branding.

The comic character Black Panther first appeared in 1966 during the civil right era. The characters’ popularity was limited to a niche audience, however — comic enthusiasts and readers of Afrofuturism, the combination of Science Fiction with technology and African mythology. A purpose behind Afrofuturism is to twist conventional media portrayals of African American culture, which at the time demonstrated characters in subservient or limited roles.

Since the civil rights era, the consumer influence of the African American middle class has grown, raising the exposure of sub-cultural influences to mainstream institutions. As a result marketers have analyzed spending trends, with the latest studies revealing values…