I watch live television very, very rarely. So seeing commercials live is always a curiosity to me. When I saw one for some random pharmaceutical the other day, I was nothing but annoyed.

I have this habit of counting the actors and figuring out how many of them should be nonwhite. In this pharma commercial, there were seven actors. (main character, three family members, three girlfriends) They were all white.

Maaaaaaybe you could argue that demographics for the particular show or the purchasers of that particular product informed casting. But I don’t think so, and the next two advertisers—Lowes and Amazon Echo—did a great job of portraying real America, rather than some lily-white suburb.

I mean, that pharma company isn’t the only one. Anyone remember this?

Advocates will tell you it’s important for a group to see itself represented—minus stereotypes—in popular culture and places of authority. I would say, as marketers, we have enormous ability to lend our skill to that effort. It’s not hard, really. When you’re casting seven actors, make sure they aren’t all the same race. Easy.

I’ll even do you one better. I challenge marketers to make sure your product accurately matches the demographics in America. That’s roughly 60 percent white, 18 percent Latino, 13 percent black, 5 percent Asian. So, for our little example of the pharma commercial, that could have easily looked like:

4 white actors

1 Latina actor

1 black actor

1 multiracial actor

That would have looked like America. Now, the producers could have gotten extra credit if, say, the nuclear family included a gay couple or a multiracial couple. Or what the heck, turn demographics on its head and feature mostly Latino actors! But let’s not get too excited. Someone might get scared.

I’m being a wee bit frivolous and perhaps dramatic here. But my point is this: Those of us in communications and marketing have incredible power to ensure our work looks like America. To make sure all populations see themselves, even in our simulations of culture. It’s really not so difficult.

Accurate representation that doesn’t rely on stereotypes is very important. We work on this intentionally even if our clients forget to. Sometimes especially when our clients forget to. And I look forward to the day when accurate representation is so rote, so natural, so abundant, that we don’t even have to think about it.

P.S. I’ve found this gem of a site to be fantastic to make sure we get our demographics right. Check it out. Good data, and great design.