Hasta La Creative!

The New York Post sat down with a bunch of big deals to discuss diversity a little while ago. The article starts off with a short profile of Billie Williamson, Ernst and Young’s newly appointed, Americas Inclusiveness Officer. OMG. These corporate bullshit titles kill me. You’re a corporation. Just go with the whole lingo. Don’t make up new, huggy feely shit. Are we at summer camp? Should I run for the Camp Akinowa Cheer and Happiness Leader this year?

The Post also invited Ron Meraz, managing director of the office of diversity for Merrill Lynch’s Global Wealth Management division; David Lipscomb, vice president, diversity and inclusion at Sovereign Bank; Donna Pedro, chief diversity officer at Ogilvy & Mather; and Jino Ahn, the founder and CEO of Asian Diversity, Inc. While diversity is an issue for all companies, naturally, I was most interested with what Pedro’s two cents would be. The answer? Nothing new. She did say:

“This is not an overnight, let’s-change-an-organization type thing. It’s a process. And it’s really all about good talent. How do we capture the new talent coming in? And how do we manage them when they’re here? Because if you’re just looking at numbers, you’ll have constant attrition and turnover. It’s about, “Does the culture sustain those differences?”

How many times are we going to hear that swill? The real question is what these guys are going to do about it. Oh wait! Pedro has a plan:

“We also have what we call an employee advisory counsel, and we educate in a very different way as opposed to the traditional training. We’ve taken each of the multicultural months and done something fabulous. For example, for Women’s History Month, we invited Paola Gianturco, a photojournalist who documents women’s human rights issues around the world, to come in and show her photos, which was a phenomenal way to educate people. [Asian-American author] Jenny 8. Lee came in with her book “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles” during Asian-Pacific Heritage Month. We do quizzes online. I even threw a concert. And it’s that engagement that’s important. When people start interacting, what they work from is their similarities.”

Asking a woman to come in to speak, a concert, quizzes online? Hmm… and how has this boosted diversity at Ogilvy? Look, I’m not against engagement, but lets get real. Ken Wheaton‘s spanking of the agencies who didn’t show up at The New York City Commission on Human Rights is just another example of how da biz is all talk, no action when it comes diversity. Not one advertising agency made the list of Diversity magazine’s top 50 this year.

Let me help you guys out with my list of 8 rules for advertising agency diversity. Drum roll please…

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