kiss my black ads: diversity

Showing posts with label diversity. Show all posts

And now an anonymous comment on CP+B & Diversity

I always say a blog can live or die by it's comments and some days I could go on life support for lack of them. But, emails, I get scads of juicy, unrepeatable emails. I understand folks wanna keep their jobs and can't be walking around practicing free speech and what not. It says a lot about the true racial climate, does it not?

But here's a comment from one brave anonymous soldier as a response to the Crispin, Porter + Bogusky show "Fearless Q+A" show on diversity in advertising:

"Here's the thing. CPB has been successful maintaining a predominately white's only culture for a long time. What would be the incentive for them to now change things up, and allow for diversity. Mr. Bogusky offered no explanation as to why his agency 700+ was almost all white. Mr. Bogusky gave no details on any diversity program he was planning to implement now or in the near future. Mr. Bogusky also seems not interested in joining the MG. Project. What I found disturbing is most agencies act like this. To them, their not at fault at all. They wont offer any solutions besides saying "we hire asians" or we have a internship program. But he's on their rocking a help haiti shirt acting like he actually gives a damn. Hes up their giving lincoln advice, but what is he doing? hypocrisy at its finest. Their no excuse for "we cant find talent". Theirs the 4a's, MGproject, Mosiac, adcolor etc. If they want to find qualified candidates of color they can, they just don't care too."

... and they call me the crazy one, a rebel, a trouble maker!

Mookie n 'Nem say...

While this emailer's heart is in the right place, he or she should have been more brief and to the point. He or she should have simply pointed out what CPB stands for: Colored People Banned.

Dammit Mookie! You shol' keeps it trill!

Crispin, Porter + Bogusky or http://www.cpbgroup.com/#cpb

https://sites.google.com/site/mayuradocs/PinIt.png

One Club's Diversity Initiative Takes Step Backward

By Matt Van Hoven on Oct 30, 2009 12:53 PM

The ad industry lives and dies by golden pencils, upholding the merits of an organization that tells you who is and who isn't worthy of greatness. This week, the One Club let go of Julius Dunn II, who moved to New York to run Adversity, the One Club's get-diverse-creatives-in-the-biz initiative — a move that will set the club back as a leader in that area.

Dunn, who was not immediately available for comment, just celebrated the end of his organization's first year as a partner with the One Club (he started and owns Adversity — which seeks to bring creative talent of diverse backgrounds into the business). The party was hosted at JWT, where that agency's diversity leader Singleton Beato sang Dunn's praises before a crowd of 200 plus advertising pros and diversity leaders. Our own Kiran Aditham was there, too.

The news came earlier this week, and already the One Club has pulled down a blog and information pages tied to Adversity. Adversity-oneclub.org now points to the organization's education page. The effects of this move have already been felt by top industry creatives. Kash Sree, ECD at Pereira & O'Dell said "I thought that the adversity program was making huge strides in the right direction. Showing many people who had no idea what the business is about or how to get some accessibility to it. Julius was working tirelessly and selflessly towards that."

To clarify, One Club CEO Mary Warlick informs AgencySpy that the program is not going away, but the partnership with Adversity is ending, "because of financial reasons." Two support staff in the New York office were also let go, as was a full time staffer in the China office.

Adversity, which was founded by Dunn and two Creative Circus colleagues, has been successful in gaining industry recognition. Initiatives include educating youth about the business (after an event headed by Dunn applications to theCreative Circus in Atlanta went up by 200%), speaker and video series, columns on AdAge, seminars, panels, and discussions on career options. Howard University, the National Urban League, Nike brand Jordan, Best Buy, Deutsch, JWT, Omnicom, R/GA and many others had been working with Dunn to strengthen the cause.

Dunn also helped the One Club create a new award, The One Club|ADCOLOR Creative Award (a black pencil), which was presented for the first time to TBWA GCD Jimmy Smith at this year's AdColor awards. The award was meant to highlight creative talent specifically of diverse background for their efforts over the last year — and give it the One Club pencil cachet so the rest of the industry would respect it.

"This is all because of JD's determination and humility in serving as a conduit for change," said Omnicom's Chief Diversity Officer, Tiffany Warren. "His work will continue no matter where he is and I hope the industry continues to support his very important mission."

Warlick reiterated the non-profit's devotion to diversity initiatives, which will include career days, boot camps and continued support of agencies involved in similar efforts. But the organization's internal structure isn't reflective of their beliefs: of the 16 members of their directorial board, only one isn't caucasian — José Mollá of la comunidad. No African Americans, Asians et al, represent the industry.

Even worse may be the fact that there hasn't been an African American judge in the One Show for 15 years or that there isn't one single African American in their hall of fame.

The One Club's mission is "to champion and promote excellence in advertising and design in all its forms," an effort Warlick says is represented (most recently) by the feature length documentary "Art & Copy." Though she would not divulge how much the production cost, "we won't break even," she admitted, adding, "we don't break even on the show, either." We've heard the film cost upwards of $1 million — money that went to "reinforce our mission", said Warlick. Meanwhile, Dunn has packed his things and moved out.

A quick perusal of the cast list reinforces the need for people like Dunn: Lee Clow, Dan Wieden, David Kennedy , Phyllis K. Robinson, Hal Riney,George Lois, Rich Silverstein, Jeff Goodby, Mary Wells, Cliff Freeman andJim Durfee. The One Club isn't to be blamed for excluding anyone, per se — but as an industry it might be time to put aside million dollar movies about the art of advertising (however beautiful they may be) and focus on ensuring that the people who do this work are representative of the country we live in. And that's something you can bring to the party.

(note: we initially published this story at 12:00 p.m. EST, and it was up for about 30 seconds when we received an email from Mark Warlick. Prior to that, the story was written without her comments, so we pulled it down to ensure the One Club's side was reflected. We apologize for any concerns this may have caused.)

Update: It's come to our attention that we missed a number of Dunn's accomplishments. Perspectives Interview Series, Morehouse Marketing Symposium, One Clubâ€“Adversity Industry Introduction, Creative Diversity for the Atlanta University Center, JWT Multi-Cultural Mixer: Creative Week NYC,Members Only Party: Creative Week NYC, One Club-Adversity Industry Introduction: Creative Week NYC, Empowerment by Design w/ Nike (Jordan) for National Urban League annual youth conference, Kingsborough College Career Expo, and the list goes on. Needless to say, Dunn was busy.

https://sites.google.com/site/mayuradocs/PinIt.png

JWT New York: Intern shirts

I'm not touching that "whip mark" comment, not even with a ten foot strap. Isn't there a new diversity initiative looking for minority hires/interns, Ummm, did someone not get the memo? Does a memo even exist?

I must say the ad guy in me says "Yeah, rookie, earn your stripes!"

The Black guy says, "ooooh, nooo, not those stripes!"

Say your name Toby, the master gave you a nice name! https://sites.google.com/site/mayuradocs/PinIt.png

Marketers in Agency Diversity Fight

Letters Sent to 25 Leading National Advertisers

Posted by Ken Wheaton on 03.25.09 @ 08:54 AM
The NAACP has sent a letter to Procter & Gamble Co. Chairman-CEO A.G. Lafley and 24 other marketers previously on Advertising Age's Leading National Advertisers list asking that they "require their advertising agencies to use diverse teams in creative and account-management positions." (read the P&G here.)

Aside from P&G, letters went out to AT&T, Verizon Communications, General Motors Corp., Time Warner, Ford Motor Co., GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Walt Disney Co., Unilever, Sprint Nextel Corp., General Electric Co., Toyota Motor Corp., Chrysler, Sony Corp., L'Oreal, Sears Holdings Corp., Kraft Foods, Bank of America, Nissan Motor Co., Macy's, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Honda Motor Co., Viacom and Berkshire. (Last month, the Association of Black-Owned Advertising Agencies sent a letter to the ANA challenging marketers on diversity.)

The letter, from NAACP Interim General Counsel Angela Ciccolo, was sent in conjunction with the Madison Avenue Project, an effort by the group and civil-rights attorney Cyrus Mehri to bring diversity to advertising agencies through either persuasion or a lawsuit. Designed to open up another front in the battle and put pressure on clients, it requests that each company "identify a senior executive to serve as a point of contact on the issue of racial bias in the advertising industry and to meet promptly with the NAACP."

After a couple of pages of data combed from MAP's previously released report, the P&G letter dispenses with the niceties.

"The behavior [of the agencies] documented in the report is illegal, and we are sure that Procter & Gamble does not wish to be associated in any way with illegal behavior. The behavior documented in the report is not only illegal but also clearly out of step with the moral climate of the times, and again we are sure that Procter & Gamble would not want in any way to be so out of step with the times."

See the Ad Age article here. https://sites.google.com/site/mayuradocs/PinIt.png

Diversity by Casting

So often a campaign goes through all the usual procedures, creative briefing, media planning, strategizing, concepting, creative directioning, creative re-directioning. After all of the "real" thinking goes on, someone remembers the real world, you know, the one outside of the agency. Then and only then do they decide to sprinkle in a lil' color. Or sometimes they forget to flavor an ad all together. It's really hard to think about the real world when for the most part your world is clannish and insular.

Thanks for sharing E.T. https://sites.google.com/site/mayuradocs/PinIt.png

Diversity In The Ad Business: "The Cowards That Be."

Diversity In The Ad Business: "The Cowards That Be."
(I was a guest blogger over at AgencySpy. Please go over and comment)

With the impending lawsuit from Cyrus Mehri coming to hit the ad industry, everyone has something to say about diversity in the business. We decided to let you guys sound off about what's really going on. If you want to sound off on diversity (men, GLBT, women, white, Latino, etc) - send us an email at superspyin at gmail dot com. The mic is yours.

Welcome Craig Brimm. He is the author of the ad blog, Kiss My Black Ads, as well as the owner and creative director of Culture Advertising Design in Atlanta. Brimm is going to talk diversity - raw.

The Diversity Dance (White people try and keep up)
"Do black people get tired of the diversity push. Hell yes! It's a mind-numbing maze of senseless posturing, positioning and quirking maneuvering, (just like some peoples dancing.) Damn it's like your whole public life is some sort of Half-Life guerilla campaign for white love...

Tip for white people: Your best black friend may not want you to know this, he/she is fronting on you. Not always, not always every minute but, at some point in the day he/she has to render part of him/herself irrelevant enough to dispose of for constant acceptance from their white counterparts. I'm sure other ethnicities do it as well. It's not all of us. Some of us are fearless and only expect acceptance on their own terms. Not that they bully you with blackness or are inflexible, but they are fearless. Obama, fearless. MLK, fearless. Muhammad Ali, fearless. Me... well, I'm working on it.

Remember your culture is like the air you breath, it's ubiquitous and virtually unnoticeable to you. So it's hard for you to see where it may offend or diminish another. But what's like air to you is like water to another person of a different background. Hence a different set of improvised rules apply to stay afloat. Not exactly earth shattering info here but, easy to forget, making it even more important to remember.

If daily life immersed in another culture is always tricky, then daily life in a General Market Ad Agency culture is like doing the Soulja Boy in a zero gravity disco. I don't know why I say things like that, just work with me. In this environment you have to understand the dominate culture on a whole other level. The intricacies of public and segmented motivation, the comedic flavor of the day as well as how to sell on a most grand scale. Guess what we do, we get it. The cool kids club isn't really all that exclusive. We came up on the same shit. The music, the TV shows, the lingo, hell if we didn't invent it we improved on it or chose not to participate in noticeable numbers. Just like you do with other cultures traditions or passing fancies of the day.

From "King of the Hill" to "Kings of Leon," we get it. From "South Park" to the newly Hallowed Ground of Hip-Hop, The South Bronx, we get it. So, really your perceived bastions of hip are just jealously guarded versions of other gleaned sub-culture. Don't get me wrong it's fun, cool, hip are whatever to belong to the insider ad clubs but, the level of self-importance some people and organizations take is a ridiculous look. A lot of these people really believe their own hype! I'm too cool to play with other kids seems to be the prevailing theme.

I think the solution lies with the "Cowards that Be." Some agency heads are pushing out on the new initiatives to up the minority numbers and they are to be lauded for their effort. I pray they continue. Some have a long way to go. The real difference will be made by the employees in the shops. It was my immediate coworkers and people in other departments that really made me feel like shit less than wanted in a few of my agency experiences. The day-to-day interaction/encounters and the level of authentic rapport makes all the difference in an integrated agency experience. That's what makes people stay.

You know if you bend the corners upward on that flappy thing on the lower part of your face it's called a smile. I know it's some corny shit, but I can count on one hand the times I got actual smiles.

More corny shit; write a letter or email to the company heads to inquire about diversity or the lack there of. When you feel comfortable enough find a way to reach out, as a company or in a solo effort.

I refuse to believe we as an industry can't solve this without litigious coercion. I can't believe we are not creative enough as an industry to actualize concepts that can successfully sell through a diverse work place. The truth is we are living a thwarted potential and a blunted affect of our collective brilliance."