Coca-Cola’s multilingual “America the Beautiful” spot is courageous beyond belief. And the recent AdAge feature story, “Ad Campaigns Are Finally Reflecting Diversity of U.S.” demonstrates a general trend of progress in creative work. But unfortunately, when we hold up the cultural messages of the Coke spot and the AdAge story as mirrors against the agency landscape, the results still aren’t pretty.
This is an overwhelmingly white industry in an America that’s increasingly multi-racial. The census tells us there are now 116 million non-white Americans — about the same number of people as the combined populations of France and Spain. So let me ask a question that’s bound to make some uncomfortable: How many non-white executives are on your agency’s leadership team? How many have there ever been, in the history of your agency? If you’re at an agency with more than 100 people and the answer is zero, I have a follow-up question: Seriously?
The problem here isn’t intent. For years, we’ve created committees, launched HR initiatives, held panel discussions — all intended to make agencies less racially stratified. But most of this activity seems to have had little effect. As Ken Wheaton wrote in an Ad Age piece in 2012 (citing survey data from Tangerine-Watson), 74% of minorities in the industry feel “My experience as an employee from a multicultural background is different from my colleagues.” This suggests that minorities at agencies feel isolated, feel they have less access and connection to senior agency leadership, and suffer through a sense of silent uneasiness.
Continue reading at AdAge.com
