On Madmen last season, an account director told a client that their sales growth was coming from “the negro market”. The client, a maker of television sets, was neither surprised by this information, nor inclined to follow the agency’s seemingly logical recommendation that they market to African-American buyers.  Acknowledging who really buys their TVs would be bad for their brand image and, presumably, sales. Or so they think. While the example wouldn’t be acceptable now, this type of secret dissonance between how brands represent themselves and market reality is often where the best marketing/advertising ideas are hiding. Take Domino’s, for example. Read the rest of this entry »