Gordon Patterson on SAARF's removal of race from AMPS

"The entire issue is being driven by emotion rather than logic," says Patterson. "And of deep concern is the absence of those who should be involved. Unless all the parties and representative bodies play a role in industry debates and participate in addressing issues, we will never move forward. In my opinion, the marketers, in particular, are keeping far too low a profile and their silence is often read as consent."

On the issue of removing race from AMPS, Patterson is convinced that media owners targeting previously disadvantaged groups will suffer, and that that is far from the spirit of removing racism. "If this initiative goes forward, we will lose the opportunity to benchmark and those who want to target the black market will be handicapped. Although we could use vernacular targeting, this will become increasing less accurate as more and more previously disadvantaged people adopt English as their language."

Patterson predicts that if race is removed from research an example of the effect it would have would be newspapers currently seen as WCI (White Coloured & Indian) prospering further while titles targeting previously disadvantaged people will suffer.

The perceived problem is that many agencies may use a WCI filter as part of their evaluation and that this prejudices black media. Patterson is adamant that doing away with race is not the solution.

The solution according to Patterson is to remove only the WCI filter from AMPS. "The objective is to broaden the scope and prompt marketers to redefine their current WCI target markets. We frequently have a need to specifically target the black market and by removing this data the industry will only be prejudicing the black media. By merely removing WCI, the potential to use this as a filter will be eliminated."

"Throwing away race entirely is like throwing the baby out with the bath water," concludes Patterson.