The lengthy article below originally appeared in the April 2006 edition of diversityinbusiness.com. A lengthy MultiCultClassics response immediately follows…
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by Matthew Jones
Diversity has proven to be a very complicated issue in the advertising industry — depending on whose lens you are using, the views are quite different. The advertising industry exists to assist clients in reaching current and potential consumers, but a subset of the industry, comprised primarily of minority-owned agencies, has carved out a successful niche helping clients to reach diverse racial and ethnic communities. Although these communities comprise the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population, most general market agencies have been slow to embrace diversity. However, general market agencies command most of the dollars spent by industry clients.
In the midst of these dual and complex realities is Don Richards who started his advertising career 40 years ago. During his career, Richards has worked for some of the largest and most prestigious agencies in the business, and on some of the most visible accounts. He began his four-decade journey at Leo Burnett Company, where he was the agency’s first African American account executive and, many years later, the agency’s first Black vice president.
Today, Richards serves as the Senior Vice President, Agency Diversity Programs at the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), an organization that advocates for greater diversity in the advertising industry. Richards’ considerable career experience helping agencies to achieve greater diversity among their ranks made him an ideal choice to help lead the associations’ efforts to promote diversity throughout the advertising industry.
Pressure on Madison Avenue
Richards took the post at the AAAA in September of 2005, and has established a solid footing in his new role. However, pressure on the advertising industry to reflect greater diversity has only intensified since Richards assumed his current post. New York City Councilman Larry Seabrook and New York City’s Human Rights Commission have launched a potentially embarrassing diversity probe among the city’s top advertising agencies. Seabrook is determined to examine all aspects of the industries activities and has even threatened to subpoena agencies’ clients.
The investigation points to a common perception of minimal diversity among advertising’s elite agencies. While declining to comment on the subpoenas, Richards has a lot of valuable insights into the state of diversity in today’s advertising arena.
Richards has what he regards as a realistic and pragmatic view of diversity in advertising. He acknowledges that there are not large numbers of minorities in upper or middle management at leading general market agencies. But he argues that that reality does not reflect the entire picture of what is happening in the industry as a whole.
“We have to be very precise when we talk about the lack of minorities in the business,” said Richards. “I don’t want to marginalize the Tom Burrells, the Carol H. Williams and the Don Colemans of the business.”
According to Richards, ethnic and urban marketing are big business, and there are minorities making good money doing it. In the eyes of many industry observers, this is a good thing for minority marketers because the multicultural arena creates greater opportunity for people of color to own their own agencies and run their own businesses.
While Richards highlights a significant and positive development within the advertising industry, the problem for the industry is not that Council Seabrook is ignoring the success of established minority agencies, the problem is Councilman Seabrook is concerned with the lack of diversity within New York City’s most distinguished advertising.
Why is it so hard to embrace diversity?
What Councilman Seabrook and many others want to know is why general market agencies are unwilling or unable to achieve acceptable levels of diversity among their employees. From Richards’ perspective, that’s a very difficult problem to define, and even more difficult to answer. According to Richards, the reasons are not as simple as most people might imagine.
“I’m not working in a discriminatory industry,” said Richards. “It certainly has its problems — and that’s what we’re focusing on. I think the problems that we have are more complex than just being discriminatory.”
One of the greatest complexities of the advertising business is that it is both a political and subjective arena. Who gets hired, who gets promoted, who gets fired — these questions are generally clouded by a political fog. Within this political landscape, it can be very difficult to separate the politics that run the business from decisions that are racially based. There can be a thousand reasons why someone is not hired or promoted in advertising — race is only one of them.
Add in the fact that, in advertising, much of the work — and the evaluation of the work — is subjective, and the problem magnifies. “In accounting, there is a right answer. If you can find the answers, you got a job,” said Richards. “There are no right or wrong answers in advertising. There is only the perception of right or wrong answers.”
The Efforts of the AAAA
For all the complexities with diversity in advertising, there are some points of clarity, and Richards spends much of his time focusing on where he knows the AAAA can make a difference.
The most influential arena is at the recruiting and entry levels. To that end, the AAAA has one of the most effective and longstanding efforts in the industry with its Multicultural Advertising Internship Program (MAIP). MAIP has been a mainstay of advertising diversity for decades, and it shows no sign of slowing down.
“We placed 97 interns (at major general market agencies) in 2005, which was our highest level to that point,” said Richards. “We have more than 100 interns already placed this year, which will again be our largest effort.”
The MAIP interns will work in more than 50 advertising offices around the country.
“We have the premiere diversity internship program in the industry,” said Richards. “It’s a huge initiative. INROADS (a very well-regarded effort that places minority graduates into corporate internship programs) has a comprehensive internship program, but they span a lot of industries, not just advertising.”
The strength of the program is reflected in the number of students trying to get in — a number that seems to be growing each year. “We get lots of applications from students from across the country,” said Richards. “We probably get more than 250 applications each year.”
When a program has been around as long as MAIP, word tends to get around. “Most colleges know (about our programs). Students hear about it in the campus career centers, through word-of-mouth — a variety of ways.”
The application process is challenging. Applicants must qualify by submitting their GPAs, application essays, letters of recommendation and undergo initial interviews. To aid in the selection process, the AAAA teams up with participating agency representatives who also evaluate the resumes.
“Then it comes down to the finalists,” explained Richards. “At that point, we do a one-on-one interview with the finalists.
Since applications come from all regions of the country, the AAAA makes good use of its national influence and agency partners. “If (an applicant) is in California, we’ll find someone from one of our member agencies in California to do the interview. This is a very structured program. Applicants are screened very carefully.”
The success of the program does not rest solely on the shoulders of the AAAA, or even the students that apply for internships. “In order for a program like this to work, we need a commitment from our member agencies. And we’ve been getting more and more commitments from them,” said Richards.
It is important to the AAAA that students have some support at the end of their internships. Each year, the AAAA and its member agencies host a grand finale for the students that successfully complete the program. The interns are flown to an official “graduation” program at New York University (NYU).
“And here’s the best part — after that, there’s a job fair,” explained Richards. “We host about 30 to 40 agencies, and they come in and interview the interns. Some students actually get hired on the spot.”
Richards is also looking at new ways to help keep in contact with the program alumni — maintaining relationships with past interns helps to extend the AAAA’s relationship with different agencies around the country. To further the relationships, Richards is creating a web site where participants can more easily keep in contact. The site will also feature relevant news and information on the industry.
“We want to give them a reason to keep visiting the site,” said Richards. “We’ll stay close to them that way.”
Operation Jump Start
Since MAIP concentrates on the client service and media sides of the advertising field, AAAA created a special effort to increase diversity among the creative ranks through an initiative called Operation Jump Start. As industry insiders know, creative recruitment is a completely different than the account services side, and it has presented some additional challenges to diversity over the years.
“Agencies don’t recruit that much at the entry level — and the few times that they do, they typically concentrate on the portfolio schools,” explained Richards.
The advertising portfolio schools are small in number, and can be relatively expensive to attend. Top agencies look only at the cream of the crop, and tend to limit their recruiting efforts to institutions like The Miami Ad School in Florida, the Portfolio Center in Atlanta, Georgia, or the Art Center in Pasadena, California.
In an effort to infuse greater diversity into the creative pool, the AAAA offers 20 minority scholarships to the industry’s top schools. To date, the program has worked well, with nearly 100 percent of the scholarship recipients eventually landing creative jobs at ad agencies.
“No one else is doing that (kind of scholarship program)” said Richards of Operation Jump Start. From his perspective, the success of the program shines a ray of hope on the issue of racial prejudice in advertising. “If the industry was truly discriminating as a rule, I don’t think you’d have those kinds of numbers.”
Operation Success
Although the advertising industry has had some success in getting minorities into the advertising industry, the larger challenge involves retention and development. As time goes on, an increasing number of rising stars drop out of the industry, and for a variety of reasons — some redefine their life’s goals and switch industries all together, some move into the multicultural area of the business, some become full-time parents, and some people just aren’t a good fit for the industry.
“There’s a lot of attrition in the advertising business,” said Richards. “People come and go all the time. That’s part of the business. I don’t think that’s going to change.”
But just because “churn” is part of the industry, does not mean that initiatives cannot be implemented to increase the retention rates for minorities. AAAA’s third initiative, Operation Success, may be the most challenging — and also the most important of the association’s diversity initiatives.
“The diversity problem in the advertising industry is not at the entry level,” said Richards. “It’s when you look six years down the road, and (candidates) are no longer in the industry.”
Developing solutions for the diversity retention has not been a focal point of the advertising industry, so the AAAA sought more ideas from advocates outside the industry. “AAAA put together an Advisory Board from outside the marketing industry that seem to demonstrate best practices,” Richards explained. “There is also a steering committee to work with the board, which is comprised of leaders within the advertising industry.”
The two groups worked together extensively to develop a compendium of what they regarded as the best and most effective ideas, which they named The Principles and Best Practices for Diversity and Inclusion in Advertising Agencies.
“In May of 2005, we sent a document to all of our member agencies, summarizing the work of the two committees,” said Richards. “Part of my job is to come in and oversee the implementation — help the agencies implement the initiatives contained in the document, to find additional best practices, and to find minority-owned companies that can help agencies implement their diversity plans.”
Such efforts are needed to help advance diversity within the advertising industry, particularly among the big New York agencies that are now the target of Councilman Seabrook’s investigation. Whether they are sufficient to satisfy the demands of Councilman Seabrook remains to be seen.
The End
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Don’t mean to play the hater, as Don Richards deserves much respect for his personal and professional milestones. But there are many points that warrant careful consideration and even rebuttal.
Richards is the Jackie Robinson of Leo Burnett, having been the company’s first Black suit and first Black vice president. Most of us would be damned lucky to retire with just those two titles on our resume. Yet how many minorities followed him? After all, Leo Burnett is not exactly the Mecca of Diversity. And despite the online references claiming Richards ultimately headed up Leo Burnett’s global diversity efforts, there are virtually zero published examples of his success in the endeavor. No doubt the man made contributions. But how the historical accomplishments might be leveraged in his current broader role has yet to be seen.
Richards’ advertising career included stints with Marschalk (now Lowe & Partners) and DDB. Not sure what he did at these shops, but neither one has positive records with diversity.
As it turns out, Richards left Leo Burnett and spent a brief time running his own multicultural agency — D.C. Richards & Associates. There’s little online information about the shop, except a short blurb revealing Richards worked for the U.S. Army, an ex-client of Leo Burnett. One can only imagine what Richards learned in the experience, as operating a minority agency must have been quite a culture shock compared to Leo Burnett.
Richards also became associate national director, affirmative action and diversity, with the Screen Actors Guild. Heaven knows what he developed at SAG, an organization that may rival the ad industry with its own diversity dilemmas.
Given the preceding biographical data, it’s tough to understand why the diversityinbusiness.com writer penned, “Richards’ considerable career experience helping agencies to achieve greater diversity among their ranks made him an ideal choice to help lead the [4As’] efforts to promote diversity throughout the advertising industry.” The alleged achievements are hardly considerable or visible. And so far, it appears that Richards has essentially helped organize existing 4As internship programs.
“We have to be very precise when we talk about the lack of minorities in the business,” said Richards. “I don’t want to marginalize the Tom Burrells, the Carol H. Williams and the Don Colemans of the business.” No, the 4As and ad industry in general continue to do a fine job of marginalizing those folks.
The article stated, “According to Richards, ethnic and urban marketing are big business, and there are minorities making good money doing it. In the eyes of many industry observers, this is a good thing for minority marketers because the multicultural arena creates greater opportunity for people of color to own their own agencies and run their own businesses.” Well, besides Tom Burrell, Carol H. Williams and Don Coleman, you’d be hard-pressed to name more Blacks making good money. Hell, some might insist Burrell, Williams and Coleman still struggle to stay in the black. And who are these industry observers championing segregation?
“I’m not working in a discriminatory industry,” said Richards. “It certainly has its problems — and that’s what we’re focusing on. I think the problems that we have are more complex than just being discriminatory.” No kidding. However, proclaiming he’s not working in a discriminatory industry is downright ludicrous. In recent months, the critics of our industry have included Patricia Gatling, Larry Seabrook, Earl Graves Jr., Richard Wayner, Renetta McCann and a host of online commentators responding to stories on AdAge.com. Ann Fudge was disturbed by the “dearth of diversity” she witnessed when joining Y&R. Neil French exposed the bias aimed at women in our ranks. A current lawsuit against McCann Erickson highlights the real potential for ageism discrimination. Yes, Mr. Richards, the problems are complex. But if you’re not working in a discriminatory industry, well, you’re just not paying enough attention.
Richards’ arguments surrounding the subjective nature of our business are tired, outdated and bullshit. “In accounting, there is a right answer. If you can find the answers, you got a job,” said Richards. “There are no right or wrong answers in advertising. There is only the perception of right or wrong answers.” Hey, if that’s true, the accounting departments in agencies should have plenty of minority representation. Show me the money minorities, Mr. Richards.
The internship programs Richards gushed about are worthy of praise. But those initiatives should have been orchestrated and executed without 4As intervention. That agencies today require guidance in such areas clearly underscores the deep mess.
Don Richards is certainly a man of honor and great accomplishments. Attacking him is absolutely not the goal here. At the same time, the majority of his background is connected with general market agencies, where excuses flourish and diversity remains a dream deferred. Plus, some of his diversity-related comments have been pretty peculiar, hinting at clueless and out-of-touch positions. We should respect Richards — but think twice before accepting his perspectives as gospel.
(Everyone is encouraged to review Essays 710 and 763 for more on this topic.)
