16817: Programming Chief Marketing Officers…?

 

Here are additional thoughts about the previously spotlighted Kellogg Executive Education | Chief Marketing Officer Program:

 

Does the program cover CMO consideration for diverse vendors—as well as scrutinizing the diversity of White advertising agencies chosen as partners? Historically, CMOs seemingly prefer to underutilize, underfund, and undermine non-White enterprises—and appear overjoyed to conspire with White ad agencies.

 

Why is the program an invitation-only affair? The Northwestern Kellogg website states, “The CMO program is invitation-only to ensure a strong peer group.” Um, that sounds like perpetuating Whites Only exclusivity.

16741: Performative Primer On Supplier Diversity.

 

While Northwestern Kellogg School of Management offers a Chief Marketing Officer Program for 12 months, University of Chicago offers an Inclusive Business and Supplier Diversity Strategies Course in one day. Yep, sounds about right in terms of dedication and prioritization.

 

Although Chief Marketing Officers and advertisers will continue to perpetuate non-White suppliers’ underutilization, underfunding, and underrepresentation—while White advertising agencies will continue to fabricate performative heat shields to check boxes on the subject.

 

In Adland, systemic racism is in endless supply—and needs no formal instruction.

16717: ANA Ethics Code Of Marketing Best Practices For Worst Perpetrators.

The ANA published ANA Ethics Code of Marketing Best Practices, which is described as follows:

 

The ANA Ethics Code of Best Marketing Practices is a framework of high-level principles, guidelines, resources and examples of ethical marketing and advertising best practices applicable to all entities engaged in marketing, advertising, and fundraising. The Code has been shaped by your peers on the ANA Ethics Code Steering Committee and is designed to be a resource to guide the industry towards ethical business practices with the overarching goal of rebuilding and maintaining consumer trust.

 

Our vision is to advance an accountable and ethical marketing ecosystem for brand growth through a central Code of Ethics, alongside complementary efforts that help implement the spirit of that code, managed by the Center for Ethical Marketing and ANA's leadership as a force for responsible growth. The Code is voluntary and matched with a foundational self-regulatory program to help educate companies on implementing acceptable industry standard practices. These efforts stave off regulation at the state and federal levels. It serves as the baseline of best practices for our industry through ethical accountability and elevates ANA and its members as leaders in this area.

 

The document includes a section titled, “Diversity and Inclusion Marketing Principles,” which poses numerous issues warranting examination.

 

First, did the ANA also deliberately decide to delete the E—ie, Equity—from DEI?

 

Second, was the D&I section delegated to committees of color and/or ERGs within the ANA?

 

Third, given that the ANA has almost annually admitted its membership does a lousy job of embracing multicultural marketing and supporting non-White vendors—ie, perpetuating systemic racism in Adland—what’s the value of best practices targeting the worst perpetrators?

 

Fourth, what’s the point of a pseudo manifesto on DEIBA+ from an organization that has no power, authority, or desire to mandate its recommendations? In short, ANA Ethics Code of Marketing Best Practices is nothing more than patronizing propaganda—a performative PR heat shield.

 

16654: The State Of Diversity—And Systemic Racism—In Adland.

 

Advertising Age published a lengthy—and seemingly regular—report on the state of DEIBA+ in Adland. To summarize, the situation is bad. No surprise there.

 

Other non-shockers include cutting diversity budgets, ghosting diversity vendors, terminating Human Heat Shields, reneging on promises, reducing crumbs, disrespecting multicrumbtual shops, and plummeting interest—deceptively offset by increasing performative PR and delegating diversity to ERGs.

 

And AI trumps DEIBA+, fueling Adland’s related AI.

 

Inside The State Of Diversity In Advertising—Waning Commitments Cause Frustration

 

Cuts to internal agency DE&I departments and brands hiring fewer diverse vendors and suppliers are among the confluent issues slowing progress

 

By Lindsay Rittenhouse

 

Four years after the murder of George Floyd sparked a social injustice movement that caused advertisers to make commitments to improve industry diversity, companies appear to be pulling back or reversing the promises they made.

 

Several confluent issues are slowing progress on diversity, equity and inclusion in certain pockets of the industry, according to 16 industry executives interviewed for this story, including DE&I consultants and diverse agency owners. Those include cuts to internal DE&I departments at ad agencies; layoffs disproportionately affecting people of color leading to a decreasing number of diverse executives and employees at agencies and marketers; and marketers scaling back on hiring diverse vendors, suppliers and running advertising that targets diverse audiences.

 

There are also factors outside the ad industry contributing to this deceleration.

 

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June 2023 effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions and many Southern states have since introduced nearly 100 bills that would limit diversity, equity and inclusion programs at state-funded schools. Utah, for one, passed an anti-DE&I bill that goes into effect on July 1. While these bills only apply to education, they are having ripple effects throughout the U.S. Companies including marketers and agencies are skittish because of the conservative-led DE&I backlash and are questioning how they are discussing their own DE&I programs and investments in this area.

 

Continued financial pressures have also caused some companies to make cuts, and DE&I is one of the first areas to be scrutinized, according to some of the people interviewed for this story.

 

“There is a panic or fear that’s happening,” said Darren Martin, founder and chairman of integrated marketing firm Streamlined Media & Communications and founder and CEO of its subsidiary, Bold Culture, an inclusive marketing and workplace development consultancy. “People don’t want to be canceled. The influx of DE&I programs, in ideology and investment financially into certain groups, was a lot [in 2020]. And it was impactful. What we’re seeing is a backlash to that.”

 

DE&I department changes

 

While many companies continue to invest in DE&I, 59% reported an increase in backlash to their DE&I efforts since the Supreme Court’s decisions on affirmative action last June, according to a January report from Littler, which surveyed 322 C-suite executives in the U.S. last November.

 

Conservative shareholders of some major marketers, including Coca-Cola Co., UPS and Home Depot, are trying to force changes that would hamper DE&I efforts at these companies, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report.

 

There is a “growing concern about legislation being passed that could affect DE&I strategies across the board,” said Ezinne Okoro, VML’s global chief client and culture strategy officer and former Wunderman Thompson global chief inclusion, equity and diversity officer. “Though most are directly related to admission processes at universities, corporations are worried about violating any laws.”

 

Increasingly, Okoro said, companies are consulting their legal teams “when building DE&I strategies.”

 

“I haven’t specifically noticed any changes with titles based on the legislation, but criteria for DE&I programs are evolving to include more language, explicitly not leaving any room for someone to interpret exclusion,” she said. “For example, a sponsorship designed for people from Asian descent might now say their focus is on Asian-American and all persons interested in a sponsorship program. Or an employee resource group is open to all employees regardless of demographic and highly encouraged that everyone joins different groups.”

 

DE&I departments are also facing budget cuts. A DE&I executive who was laid off and requested anonymity said job opportunities in advertising have been bleak. The person said they have applied to 55 jobs in six weeks and received two interviews, and they have seen no open DE&I positions within the major holding companies.

 

“There’s nothing,” this person said. “There’s a high probability of me not staying in advertising.”

 

When Omnicom’s DDB Global Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer Nikki Lamba left last June, the agency did not replace her in the role. In April, Interpublic Group of Cos.-owned Mediahub laid off Michelle Gustilo-Smithson, its VP and HR director of diversity, equity and inclusion, as part of a larger decision by IPG Mediabrands to consolidate individual agency DE&I efforts within the network. Jeff Marshall, chief diversity officer and head of diversity, equity and belonging for UM Worldwide, was also affected by the layoffs and IPG Mediabrands consolidation.

 

Lamba, Gustilo-Smithson and Marshall could not be reached for comment.

 

“Nikki made her own voluntary decision to leave,” a DDB spokesperson wrote to Ad Age. “Her relationship with DDB was strong through to the end, where she agreed to work an extended notice period to ensure business continuity.”

 

The spokesperson added that DDB has “intentionally shifted the role of DEI from a siloed practice, putting DEI&B at the core of every people & culture process and activation … We will continue to closely partner with Omnicom Global Chief DEI Officer Emily Graham and our many talented, and diverse leaders across the DDB network to keep DEI&B a top priority.”

 

An IPG Mediabrands spokesperson confirmed to Ad Age that it restructured the individual agency teams that are part of its “people experience” function, including DE&I, into one network group. “Our goal was to deliver a more consistent, connected experience for all employees by ensuring they have access to the most impactful programs and talent initiatives that exist across our network,” the spokesperson said.

 

Agencies in particular are pressured by clients scaling back marketing budgets and there has been a wave of layoffs as a result, many done quietly in a series of small batches. Martin said efforts to consolidate individual agency DE&I efforts at a holding company level is a trend he is seeing, as well.

 

“What happened? The same thing that usually happens,” Martin said, noting DE&I is always one of the first areas to be scrutinized. “DE&I was the first thing to be like, ‘Can we cut it to save money?’”

 

To be sure, there are agencies that are still investing in DE&I.

 

Empower Media, despite seeing a string of staff departures and client losses last year following an ownership change, doubled down on DE&I by recently promoting Chief People Officer Marijke Woodruff to chief diversity and inclusion officer. At the same time, the Cincinnati-based creative and media agency launched Empower Her, which invests in nonprofit organizations helping advance women- and minority-owned businesses.

 

“It is our philanthropic arm of the agency where we want to invest in nonprofit organizations focused on women breaking that glass ceiling of equality and really fostering a culture of empowerment for women and other underserved or social issues,” Woodruff said of Empower Her. “It’s not just for women, but we feel that we have that responsibility.”

 

Marketer pullbacks

 

Marissa Nance, founder and CEO of Native Tongue Communications, one of the first and only female- and minority-certified media agencies, shared her experience during a Female Quotient panel at Advertising Week New York last October of two major clients moving their business because they said they were scaling back on the number of diverse-owned vendors they employ due to the shaky economy.

 

“About February [2023], I got two calls,” Nance said on the panel. “They were very similar but I’m going to give you one of them; the one that resonated the most. It was from a non-Hispanic, white cis-male [who] said ‘I want you to know that we’re not going to work with you … this is going to be a rocky year with the economy and my P&L is more important than my diversity that I have to claim.’”

 

Nance told Ad Age that she had already done work for the Fortune 500 company, and that the marketer essentially told her that she could sue him, but she would not be paid for that work. Nance said she needed to pay her people who were already clocking hours doing work for the two companies and could not afford to sue.

 

As of May, she said Native Tongue has still not fully recovered from those losses. It was “over $500,000” between the two of them, Nance said. “Beyond that happening to us, there have not been a lot of new opportunities.”

 

This is part of another troubling trend diverse-owned agencies are seeing right now.

 

Hilda Adeniji, senior production manager for Unilever within its marketing and engagement department and co-founder of MWBE-certified cultural consultancy Transform the Hustle, said there is a growing move, especially in the consumer packaged goods space, of companies consolidating their marketing budgets with one agency of record, which is typically a white- and male-dominated shop, and scaling back with diverse-owned vendors. She specified that she was not referring to Unilever.

 

“Brands are going back on initiatives they were doing or phasing them out quietly,” she said, referring to commitments that were made to hire more diverse suppliers and vendors. The cuts are primarily affecting marketing, advertising, experiential and influencer budgets, according to Adeniji.

 

This is making it harder for diverse-owned agencies to survive and thrive.

 

Dawn Wade, managing partner and chief strategy officer of Louisville, Kentucky-based Black-owned creative marketing agency Nimbus, said it’s also frustrating that a lot of brands still only hire diverse-owned agencies for DE&I-related projects or multicultural marketing. She said she wants to see more major marketers hire diverse-owned agencies for “general market” work.

 

“It’s as if a [diverse-owned agency] is not capable of talking to everyone,” Wade said. “And it makes you wonder why? Because we’ve always had to acquiesce to a general market. So how are we not able to create ideas and creative that will resonate with that, as well?”

 

Hope Smith, director of brand strategy for Nimbus, said many marketers also have a general distrust of their diverse-owned agency partners.

 

“That’s one of the things that we’ve dealt with for a long time, the lack of trust in what we’re saying just because those that are in leadership don’t understand the insights or don’t understand the deep cultural roots or nuances that come with a lot of the work that we do,” Smith said. “It makes them uncomfortable, honestly. Instead of leaning into that discomfort and trusting your agency and putting out something that’s going to be bold and disruptive and make your brand stand out, a lot of times it is watered down to be 20% of the original idea that we pushed. That just hits you in your gut as a partner.”

 

This declining investment with the excuse of an unstable economy continues to persist despite ample evidence that there are financial gains for companies that hire diverse employees and vendors and invest in targeting diverse consumers. A McKinsey & Co. report from December found companies with greater executive representation of women and people of color had a 39% greater likelihood of financial outperformance.

 

Declining numbers

 

The slowing progress is being reflected in the number of diverse employees at brands and agencies.

 

In 2023, diversity within the marketing industry dropped for the first time in several years—people of color made up 30.8% of the marketing industry last year, down from an all-time high of 32.3% in 2022, according to a February study by the Association of National Advertisers. And a 4A’s study last year found that the number of agencies owned or run by white executives jumped to 90.2% in 2022 from 73% in 2021.

 

Hiring and talent experts in the industry have told Ad Age that layoffs are impacting people of color disproportionately. 4A’s CEO and President Marla Kaplowitz has said though she doesn’t have hard data on how layoffs are impacting people of color in particular, staff cuts are affecting “a lot more junior- to middle-management roles. If you look at just the composition of agencies, more diverse people are junior to mid-level,” she said.

 

A talent recruiter who spoke on condition of anonymity said a lot of the calls she was getting in 2020 to help agencies and marketers hire diverse employees feel “performative” now. This recruiter said there really isn’t a mandate for diverse recruits anymore.

 

“If I look at my talent that I’ve placed in the last two to three years, the majority are diverse talent and I was really proud of that work,” this recruiter said. “There was such a huge, huge urgency for diverse talent. A lot of that was just PR. The diverse talent knew it was. I knew it was … I think because of this quote, unquote recession, companies are just like ‘We need the skills [and] we can’t worry about [diversity] anymore.’”

 

These declining numbers have a ripple effect.

 

Dèja Mays, a freelance art director and co-founder of The Come Up, a networking event series with The One Club, set up to help Black, Indigenous and people of color in advertising, said all of these diversity issues she consistently sees within the ad industry make her question if this is the right career for her. Mays said her peers of color in the industry have had a harder time finding work than their white counterparts in the past few years, even after companies made commitments in 2020 to improve staff diversity.

 

“Even though I love being creative and I love advertising and marketing, I don’t really know my value in this industry,” Mays said. “You can’t treat people’s culture as a trend. We’re valuable. To me, if you’re cutting budgets and you’re cutting people of color out what does it say about you? About how you think about people of color?”

 

Marina Filippelli, CEO of multi-segment agency Orci, said the brands that have fewer people of color working on their marketing are the same ones not investing properly in reaching diverse audiences or employing diverse-owned vendors. Companies are “less focused on making sure that they have the right minorities represented in the marketing organizations that are making the decisions,” she said.

 

When brands do not invest in diversity or have the right people creating the ads that are intended to target diverse audiences, mistakes and missteps also happen, Smith said.

 

“The consumer is only getting louder as brands are getting a little bit quieter when it comes to diversity,” she said. “Don’t be the brand that gets canceled because you don’t see the relevance and the importance that a certain group of people has.”

 

Beyond missteps, brands are missing out on a financial opportunity by not employing diverse employees. DE&I consultant Shari Dunn said she recently worked with SharkNinja, a product design and technology company, and an idea to create a hair dryer with features to better serve people with curlier hair came from an engineer of color.

 

That product “opens up exponentially more market share,” Dunn said. “And Black women spend a shit ton of money on their hair … If companies are pulling back on their diverse marketing, [they’re losing out on] trillions of dollars. So you’re saying you just don’t want the money? This is a legitimate question.”

16610: Quaker Rises To The Opportunity In Performative Style.

 

Quaker launched a promotional photo series—100 Reasons to Rise—featuring portraits of people aged 1 to 100 years experiencing emotional breakfast moments.

 

The images were captured by prominent photographers Misan Harriman and Domizia Salusest, allowing Quaker to conveniently check off two diversity vendor boxes.

 

Not present in any of the scenes: Aunt Jemima. Such a missed opportunity to add a ~135-year-old to the collection.

 

16314: Ad Council Elevates Diego Scotti.

 

Advertising Age reported that the Ad Council appointed soon-to-be-departing Verizon CMO Diego Scotti as the new chair of its board of directors. Whoop-dee-damn-doo.

 

The role is a volunteer status position, right? Would hate to think the chair—a gig that rotates yearly—might receive any monetary compensation.

 

In contrast, various sources show Ad Council executives collecting generous salaries, with President & CEO Lisa Sherman raking in nearly $1.2 million annually—and many other executives pocketing at least $200k and up to $475k. That’s a lot for a nonprofit organization.

 

To make a semi-sloppy segue, it begs questions regarding the Ad Council’s diversity vendor budget—that is, how much money goes to minority-owned enterprises versus White-women-owned companies? And how does the diversity vendor budget compare to the loot awarded to White advertising agencies? Crumbs to cake, no doubt.

 

Hey, Ad Council even has a history of hiring White people to play minorities.

 

Ad Council Appoints Diego Scotti As New Board Chair

 

Scotti is set to depart Verizon as CMO later this year

 

By Asa Hiken

 

The Ad Council has appointed Diego Scotti as the new chair of its board of directors. The longtime marketing executive is slated to step down from his current role as chief marketing officer and executive VP at Verizon later this year, though it’s unclear whether he has another job lined up.

 

Scotti joined the Ad Council board of directors in 2016, led its diversity task force from 2018 to 2021 and has served as its vice chair since 2020. He succeeds Jacki Kelley, executive VP, chief client officer and chief business officer at IPG, who served the typical chair term of one year. Tara Walpert Levy, VP at YouTube, Americas, and co-vice chair of the Ad Council’s board of directors, will succeed Scotti as chair this time next year.

 

In his new role, Scotti will work with the Ad Council’s governing body and other leadership to spearhead the communication industry’s efforts to address social issues such as mental health, gun violence and racial justice. The non-profit organization typically creates national campaigns to draw attention to these issues; for example, in April the Ad Council teamed with Amazon for an audio-focused campaign addressing teen mental health.

 

At Verizon, where he has served as CMO since 2014, Scotti helped formulate the Responsible Marketing Action Plan, which is the telecom company’s long-term commitment to furthering diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). He also founded Adfellows, a marketing fellowship targeted toward building diversity at Verizon.

 

“Diego’s unrelenting commitment to DEI and social impact has been an invaluable asset to the Ad Council and is one of the many reasons he is going to be extraordinary in his role as Board Chair,” said Lisa Sherman, president and chief executive of the Ad Council, in a press statement.

 

Scotti’s appointment follows recent additions to the Ad Council that were made in April, which included a new chief media officer, DJ Perrera, and new board members.

16096: AW/OUTLOOK 2023 = AW, HELL NO.

Adweek collected craploads of content under an AW/Outlook 2023 banner, including forgettable fluff like:

 

• A CMO roundtable held on a rectangular table. One semi-interesting aspect of the piece is the diversity of the group, which hardly reflects Adland—or even CMOs, for that matter. What do these executives think when they meet with their White advertising agencies—are they the only identifying fill-in-the-racial-ethnic-gender-lifestyle character in the conference room? Have they issued any performative diversification demands to the exclusive partners?

 

• A long and laborious report on “savvy brands” allegedly continuing to “prioritize multicultural marketing” in the coming year. The prioritization covers common heat shields such as promises of increased spending with minority-owned agencies, media, and vendors. Of course, there’s no admission that such noble ventures receive low priority status. Ad Age illustrated the story with a royalty-free stock image of diverse hands holding a key. A more appropriate picture would be diverse hands accepting crumbs.

In short, the outlook for 2023 looks like outlooks for the last 60+ years. It’s all about White men and White women looking out for themselves.

 

Savvy Brands Will Continue to Prioritize Multicultural Marketing in 2023

 

Companies ahead of the curve are already focused on diverse agencies, media suppliers and vendors

 

By Jameson Fleming

 

Last October, Marc Pritchard, P&G’s chief brand officer and one of the most influential people in marketing, delivered a message that some marketers have embraced for years.

 

At the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference, Pritchard explained two things to the several thousand attendees. First, marketers need to see multicultural marketing as mainstream marketing. No longer should brands silo audiences with messages that don’t align with a brand’s mass marketing communications; instead, multicultural messages should heavily influence a brand’s mass messaging. Second, Pritchard would be investing heavily in Black-owned media to amplify those outlets and better reach the consumers who are driving growth for brands.

 

While brands like P&G lead with this in mind, many don’t. Those who don’t are missing opportunities to reach the next generation of consumers, who grow more diverse and inclusive with each passing day. Brands that don’t shift their mass marketing to live out a multicultural message will fall behind their competitors, just as those who didn’t embrace digital fell behind a decade ago. They must look within their teams and agency partners to fill the room with people who embody the changing demographics of the U.S. and make intentional decisions to shift their marketing and change how they work with diverse-owned agencies, vendors and media suppliers.

 

“The mass market is held together by very human impulses,” said Chaucer Barnes, CMO of Translation, Adweek’s 2022 Multicultural Agency of the Year. “The way to think about how to segment them is always more powerful when you focus on the things that connect them rather than the things that divide them.”

 

Chasing the youth

 

America’s shifting demographics make one thing clear: Each successive generation is more diverse and inclusive than the previous. From 2016 to 2060, the Census Bureau projects the white, non-Hispanic population to fall from nearly 200 million to 180 million—or from making up more than 60% of the American population to around 44%. The amount of people who identify as Asian or Hispanic will double in that time frame, and the total people who identify as at least two races is projected to triple.

 

Just as digital marketing in the past 15 years (and social, more recently) went from line item to core to any marketers’ strategy, Barnes sees multicultural marketing making that same shift—except savvy brands made that shift years ago.

 

“It maybe was a useful designation long, long ago,” Barnes said. “Now it’s so obviously the [incoming] expectation of anyone expected to move markets for real that it’s not even helpful to say.”

 

To win that next generation, Barnes said marketing must embrace multiculturalism because that’s now simply culture going into 2023.

 

“If you have a diversity problem, you definitely have a youth problem,” Barnes added.

 

Taco Bell chief brand officer Sean Tresvant acknowledged that while the brand is trying to sell to everyone, it is talking to “somebody” via its marketing. “That somebody is Gen Z,” Tresvant continued. “Gen Z is the most racially, sexually, ethnically diverse generation that’s digitally native.”

 

And that means making multicultural content that has mass audience appeal. Tresvant pointed to a World Cup campaign from its cultural agency Cashmere that starred soccer player Ashley Sanchez and featured music from Niña Dioz, Mexico’s first openly queer rapper.

 

“Let’s just create a big, great piece of content that … appeals to Latine, but it was not a Latine ad,” Tresvant said. “It was an ad that everybody resonated with.”

 

‘You can’t take your foot off the gas pedal’

 

If—or, more likely, when—budgets tighten up in 2023 because of the economy, CMOs have actionable advice.

 

The first was widely agreed upon: Brands should not adapt a mass market message to multicultural audiences. It should be the other way around.

 

“If you don’t have the ability to do nuanced things, find where the insights are the same,” said Carla Hassan, CMO at JPMorgan Chase. “Find where there is an intersection of needs and wants. Your brand can authentically play there and have messaging that resonates with everybody.”

 

Ultimately, marketers always need to drive growth, which, for most companies, came from non-white groups during the pandemic.

 

“[Multicultural marketing] is front and center and integral to our marketing plans for 2023 and beyond,” said Kristin McHugh, svp marketing and creative at Verizon. “You can’t take your foot off the gas pedal.”

 

Brands need to look for simple human truths to leverage across all of their marketing, Hassan said. “We use those truths to turn into actionable insights that turn into good content,” she added.

 

Companies also need to look within at who is creating their messaging.

 

“When you focus on DEI and your employee base starts to mirror your customer base, you begin to make the right decisions. And that includes how you market, how you target customers and how you message,” said Chris Byrne, president, marketing operations and digital acceleration at UPS.

 

Diversity across agency partners

 

Better work will only come from a room where a cross-section of groups have a seat at the table, not just at the brand but also with its partners.

 

“You cannot produce marketing that resonates with a multicultural audience if you’re working in an echo chamber,” Hassan said.

 

It’s one thing to have people of different backgrounds find a home within a brand’s marketing team. It’s another to create a pipeline for the next generation of diverse talent to quiet those echo chambers for good.

 

Verizon’s Adfellows program places new talent into brands like Anheuser-Busch, American Express and Kellogg’s, as well as within agencies, and has a 95% industry retention rate. The brand plans to expand enrollment to 250 people by 2026.

 

According to McHugh, Verizon has pushed for diversity across its agency partners, as marketers can go wrong when the people creating the message don’t reflect the communities they’re trying to reach. To that end, Verizon reported in June 2022 that people of color made up nearly 40% of its marketing and agency partners.

 

Payment terms persuasion

 

It’s critical that brands develop strong relationships with its agency partners and vendors, especially diverse-owned and women-owned companies, which have been vocal about how longer payment terms are often more harmful to them.

 

While procurement teams often dictate payment terms, McHugh said it’s on a brand’s top marketers to develop relationships, educate them and push for exceptions when a supplier absolutely cannot stomach a 90- or 120-day payment term (which has become all too common in the industry).

 

For CMOs who do take the time and effort to successfully persuade procurement teams to change its terms, a bigger seat at the table awaits them, Barnes said.

 

“If they are willing to lean over a little bit to perhaps operate outside of their remit or just be a bug in somebody’s ear, they’re going to get amazing returns on that effort,” Barnes added.

 

Expanding media suppliers

 

Another area where brands can be more thoughtful with their budgets is where they buy media.

 

Many brands have made pledges to support programs like GroupM’s Media Inclusion Initiative, which requires them to increase spend with Black-owned media companies. One common refrain from some media buyers, however, is that there’s not enough inventory to go around.

 

Barnes poured cold water on that, pointing to how Black-owned outlets aren’t typically sold through.

 

“We would be seeing a different kind of media environment if indeed there wasn’t any inventory left. Whenever we run out of commodities, like wheat, we know what happens,” Barnes said of how CPM prices should be increasing dramatically when they aren’t.

 

Brands can turn to influencers to diversify their media spend, but it’s their responsibility—not influencers’ or creative agencies’ responsibility—to close the pay gap, Tresvant said, adding that microinfluencers need to get paid on the same scale.

 

Barnes also suggested brands could be reallocating money in programmatic buys on social platforms directly to the creators that make those platforms thrive.

 

“You’re probably not going to get a Black alternative to Disney,” Barnes said. “But you’re definitely going to get—and you already have—a Black alternative to Taylor Swift.”