Last March, Tanner Colby presented painfully long and incoherent perspectives at Slate, declaring Matthew Weiner would delve into race-related areas during the past season of AMC series Mad Men. MultiCultClassics accurately predicted Colby was dead wrong.
Colby is back with fresh long-winded bullshit at The Big Tent, displaying his peculiar thinking while hawking his new book, “Some of My Best Friends are Black.” Amazingly, the Ad Age piece ends by claiming, “This interview has been edited and condensed.” Okey-doke, but it’s still over 3,000 words too long.
Fully examining Colby’s commentary would require rivaling his verbose style, ultimately putting blog readers into a catatonic state. Hence, MultiCultClassics will only address a few of the man’s bizarre and uninformed points.
Colby stated, “If you read the rest of my book, you come away with the conclusion that the problem for the advertising industry doesn’t exist inside the advertising industry. … If you want more black people in advertising, you fix housing and transit policies to get more access to jobs.” Hey, it’s not simply a matter of leveling the professional playing field; rather, the solution demands lifting the entire race. Imagine if Major League Baseball, for instance, had used this excuse to stall integration. Hang tight, Mr. Robinson, we’ll let you play after we’ve created economic equality. Even ADCOLOR® and the 4A’s would take a pass on attempting to tackle such a grand and noble endeavor. Hint to Colby: Fixing discriminatory and outdated hiring policies might be easier—and more effective—than fixing housing and transit policies. Just a thought.
Anyone who can decipher Colby’s ramblings about “minority set-asides” will receive a crisp one-dollar bill—which, by the way, roughly matches the standard “minority set-asides” doled out to non-White agencies.
Another Colby gem concluded, “… I think anyone who is being honest about the minority agencies would be frank to admit that they have to evolve. I’m not saying that you can’t take one of these shops and innovate. But something is going to have to change.” The man once again took a swerving turn and completely missed the real issue. Sure, the minority shops have work to do. But it’s grossly unfair to place the burden of progress on firms that have never exceeded 500 employees or held AOR status for $100 million accounts. If the budding author paid closer attention to Mad Men—contrasting Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce to modern counterparts—he’d realize that the White agencies are in far greater need of evolution.
Culturally clueless Neanderthals like Tanner Colby ought to try moving ahead on the Darwinian chart too.
perhaps you'd like to interview me directly for multicultclassics rather than just going off on my interview before bothering to read the book? send me your address (at www.tannercolby.com) and i'll have viking's publicist get a review copy in the mail and then i'd be happy to answer any questions you've got. -- best, tanner colby
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely every one of Mr. Colby's suggestions for transforming the industry, as condensed in the interview, means the utter demise of our small 'minority-owned' business.
ReplyDeleteWe're struggling as-is to stay alive eating from the crumbs of the advertising table (and I speak on behalf of my own company, and dozens upon dozens of others in the same boat; we've discussed this at depth amongst ourselves).
Mainstream ad agencies have zero interest in working with small MBE's. None. Zero. I've been doing this for 20 years. For all the talk of 'set-asides,' that's just all it is. Talk.
So we're left to scramble and work with the scraps given to minority shops. If they are brought into the mainstream agency fold, they will not, at all, continue to give us work. Period.
Again, in the 20 years since I've been doing this, when a minority ad exec moves into a mainstream agency, they're under so much pressure to perform up to par (in the eyes of that agency) that they stop working with minority companies.
Instead, they choose to work with more expensive and, always, always, white vendors, 100% of the time. I have never, not once, working all across the U.S., seen one exception to this rule.
What the author is asking, in order for change to be made, is that us smaller, barely-hanging-in-there shops fall on our swords and sacrifice ourselves so that something can change.
What is he asking of the bigger white-owned companies?
Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
WHY do we have to take the fall and sacrifice everything, and they have to give up absolutely nothing in Mr. Colby's plan?
Mr. Colby,
ReplyDeleteMultiCultClassics will take a pass on the interview and free book, but thanks for offering. To be clear, this post was responding to your Ad Age interview and Slate columns—it was not a review of your book.
If you truly are interested in addressing your cultural cluelessness, consider reading a few books yourself, including Corporate Tribalism, Madison Avenue and the Color Line, Mad Man, Success Runs In Our Race, Proversity or What’s Black About It?
Thanks for the comment.
Everybody is trying to profit off the diversity problem that exists in advertising. From the diversity officers getting a fat weekly paycheck to the people that run the bootcamps, the lawyers trying to getting paid, people winning fake "diversity" awards right down to people selling books. At the end of the day, its all about making money off of people's misery.
ReplyDeletePeople have too much to lose to fix diversity in advertising. As far as black agencies go, they have always been screwed.
Read those books? Colby is too busy plagiarizing from them to actually admit that he read them. Plus to read them would mean he'd actually have to engage with their arguments (which would nullify the hell out of his) rather than pontificate on a subject which he appears to have spent all of five minutes studying. The guy is a blowhard and a fraud.
ReplyDeleteDude himself is swarthy looking from South Louisiana. He may be partially black. Dig this from Ebony: http://www.ebony.com/entertainment-culture/some-of-my-best-friends-are-black-really
ReplyDelete