ANCESTRY.COM: You Should Have Called The Media Guy!

Well, it’s been a long wait. Over two weeks to be exact and I’m still waiting by the phone awaiting a call from either Margo Georgiadis, CEO of Ancestry, or senior VP of U.S. Marketing Caroline Sheu…or both. Perhaps it will be a conference call, who knows? So, why should these two industry leaders ring up the independent Media Guy consultant? Well, have you seen their tone-deaf phone “Inseparable” commercial that lit up the airwaves back in April?

Set in the Antebellum South, a foggy pre-dawn scene shows an out-of-breath white man offering a wedding ring and a promise to flee to the North to his love interest, a (presumably enslaved) black woman:

“Abigail,” he says. “We can escape, to the North. There’s a place we can be together, across the border. Will you leave with me?”

But, before I prattle on about how the advertising vision of the Media Guy would have saved the genealogy company millions of dollars in bad will and publicity, let’s watch the spot together:

I understand at the ad was most likely intended to be a romantic adaptation of how someone taking a DNA test ends up with muddle of geographic origins in their heritage. But it wound up as an discomforting blunder when critics correctly pointed out that the “forbidden love” plot was a story gone wrong because the pre-Civil War Deep South was largely defined by the ruthless sexual exploitation of black slave women by white slave owners. All of this brought disdain from the community at large.

With an IPO looming for the genealogical website, this mistake could have been costly. Ancestry quickly pulled the spot and apologized profusely. In a statement, the company told WIRED,  “Ancestry is committed to telling important stories from history,” the company said. “This ad was intended to represent one of those stories. We very much appreciate the feedback we have received and apologize for any offense that the ad may have caused.”

I have to say that this tightly worded apology—mostly likely crafted by Sheu—is a ton better than I would have written. Her experience at GAP, Inc. and her B.A. in Political Science and in East Asian Studies from UCLA, an M.A. in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley, and a J.D./M.B.A. from University of Chicago pales my degrees from UCLA for sure. But with “20 years of experience transforming marketing organizations to adapt to rapidly changing consumer and technology trends” you would figure that Ancestry would have never gotten into this mess to begin with.

A little vision (and a one-hour consulting session with the Media Guy) would have revealed so much just by me looking at the storyboards.

Oh, where to start?

Let’s start with this litany of historical and cultural offenses shoehorned into the 30-second commercial:

• The notion that a white male protector could only liberate a black woman from slavery…
• That most mixed-race people in America today descend from tender, consenting relationships when the biggest historical reason is actually rape…
• Prior to 1861, it was legally impossible for slave women to file rape charges against a white man in Southern U.S. states, 
• That interracial relationship was even possible in this time and this place given the extreme power irregularities of the institution. And finally…
• That there was a promised land of equal opportunity in the “North.” (Breaking News: it wasn’t even close.)

Wow, that’s a lot of errors in thirty seconds. I mean, clearly there were no history books allowed at these final planning sessions prior to their commercial shoot. But, hey, Ancestry was spinning some fairy tale that by filling up a small vial with your saliva that they can miraculously fill in the family tree branches that were severed by the transatlantic slave trade. Oh jeez.

They say when you are so close to a project or a situation, you can’t see the forest among the trees and in this case, that idiom definitely applies. Some extra eyes from the outside would have identified all of this troubling content before filming began. What a waste of filming days and post production and that’s not to mention the damage that could have leveled at their impending IPO.

As a descendant of Russian immigrants from the 1880’s due to the state-sanctioned policies of Alexander III, trust me when I say that tracing family ties aren’t so straightforward. Names were often changed to escape persecution and in the pre-Civil War Era, names of slaves were altered when they were sold to new owners. When you are doing a deep dive on your family history, the process of doing so unearths up painful truths you weren’t expecting.

Reaching out to a diverse audience is important for Ancestry because their DNA database are overwhelmingly white. They tell a much hazier origin story for African Americans. I’m told that Ancestry can divide the 32,000-square-mile island of Ireland into 85 distinct genetic populations. For all of Africa, the company can only carve out nine. Recruiting a more diverse customer base would certainly help lift some of those limitations, and that’s how this commercial came into play however it came off.

So here’s my message to Margo Georgiadis and Caroline Sheu. I called you both and left messages. Two weeks have passed and I’m beginning to think you won’t call me back, but you should and I’ll answer 24/7, 365 days a year. My fees are small and a few hours along with a business class airline ticket will get you and in-person meeting and I’ll save you the hassles of another misfire in the advertising arena. I have the midas touch wherever I go. Once upon a time I made falling in your home a cottage industry and convinced the New York Times that Syria was a top 10 destination.

Do yourselves a favor, don’t say for a second time, “We should have called the Media Guy!” I’ll be waiting with my out special set of media skills. This latest commercial shows that companies like Ancestry still need to prove they can be trusted with their media buys.

Previous “You Should Have Called the Media Guy” Columns:

Hong Kong Tourism Board
Burger King
H&M
The American Red Cross
Pepsi
Kellogg’s
Anaheim Ducks
T-Mobile, Dove, McDonald’s