Ads Will Focus on ‘Everyday’ Black Life Styles

For several years now, Pepsi has pumped many millions of dollars into signing big-name black celebrity spokespersons such as Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie and Tina Turner.

That will continue. But the president of the black-owned advertising agency that has just taken over Pepsi’s estimated $3-million minority advertising account says that Pepsi will soon test other, far less costly, ways of reaching the black consumer: black life style commercials.

“Celebrities are not a very effective way to reach the black consumer,” said Keith E. Lockhart, president of New York-based Lockhart & Pettus. “Commercials must also show how blacks live, not just how the black superstars live.” At the same time, he said, the agency will place less of Pepsi’s black-directed advertising on television and more on radio.

Lockhart & Pettus, which posted 1986 billings of $22 million, also picked up Chrysler’s minority advertising account last week. The agency already handles minority marketing for Canadian Club and New York’s Consolidated Edison.

And last week Lockhart was in Los Angeles, scouting out a location for a West Coast office. “We’re doing so much shooting in L.A.,” he said later in a telephone interview from New York, “we might as well open an office there.”