15935: The One Club Creative Hall Of Fame Adds Color.

 

AgencySpy posted on The One Club 2022 Creative Hall of Fame inductees, including Cheryl D. Miller, Janet Kestin, Nancy Vonk and Carol H. Williams. Wonder what Neil French would say about the induction of Kestin and Vonk. Meanwhile, Miller and Williams join Tom Burrell as the only Black Creative Hall of Famers—inadvertently spotlighting how The One Club has failed to recognize iconic trailblazers like Georg Olden, Roy Eaton and Caroline Jones. The One Club for Creativity should be renamed The One Club for Exclusivity.

 

The One Club Announces Latest Inductees Into its Creative Hall of Fame

 

By Kyle O’Brien

 

The One Club for Creativity has announced the latest group of advertising, design, marketing and education innovators who will be inducted into the Creative Hall of Fame in October, and it includes a diverse mix of innovators.

 

The non-profit that supports and celebrates the global creative community through efforts including creative boot camps, the One Show and One School, has named eight new inductees to add to the list of creative luminaries in advertising and design, which started with the induction of Leo Burnett in 1961.

 

The latest inductees to join the hall of fame are:

 

• Joe Duffy, branding and design innovator, Founder, Chairman, Duffy & Partners;

 

• John Hunt, co-founder of internationally recognized South African agency TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris, global creative chair, TBWA\Worldwide;

 

• Cheryl D. Miller, graphic designer, writer, artist, theologian, and decolonizing historian known for her contributions to racial and gender equality in the graphic design field;

 

• Nancy Vonk and Janet Kestin, former co-chief creative officers at Ogilvy Toronto, co-founders of the Swim leadership lab;

 

• Carol H. Williams, president, CEO, chief creative officer and owner, Carol H. Williams Advertising, the longest-running U.S. independent multicultural agency

 

Educators Hall of Fame

 

• Ron and Pippa Seichrist, co-founders, Miami Ad School

 

The black-tie Creative Hall of Fame induction ceremony, which is a fundraising gala to support The One Club’s many global DEI programs, will take place on October 27 at Tisch Skylights at The Shed, Hudson Yards in New York.

 

Inductees are nominated and voted on by The One Club board of directors. Those chosen must have proven their impact, influence and inspiration on the industry.

 

“The Creative Hall of Fame is the ultimate recognition of a storied career of a visionary creative professional,” said Kevin Swanepoel, CEO, The One Club in a statement. “More importantly, this newest group of inductees transcend advertising: they influence pop culture, uplift underrepresented groups, and inspire the next generation of creative thinkers and doers.”

 

Additional inductees will be announced soon. Event and ticket details are available [at The One Club website.]

13832: Burrell Breaks Barriers.

Adweek reported Tom Burrell became the one Black in The One Club Creative Hall of Fame. Kudos to Burrell, but surely there are other worthy Blacks—including Georg Olden, Roy Eaton and Harry Webber—who also deserve recognition in the exclusive club.

Tom Burrell Becomes First African-American Inducted Into One Club Creative Hall of Fame

He founded Burrell Communications Group in 1971

By Erik Oster

Burrell Communications Group founder Tom Burrell, who has been breaking barriers his entire career, has added yet another one to the list.

The One Club inducted Burrell into its Creative Hall of Fame, making him the first African-American to receive the honor, which dates back to Leo Burnett’s inaugural induction in 1961. Burrell was inducted into the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame back in 2004.

A pioneer in recognizing and celebrating the purchasing power of the African-American community, Burrell coined the phrase “Black people are not dark-skinned white people.” His advertisements for Coca-Cola are archived at the Library of Congress, recognized for their cultural and historical significance.

Tom Burrell began his career in the mailroom at Wade Advertising while still at Roosevelt University. The agency’s first black employee, he soon earned himself a junior copywriting position, working on the agency’s Alka-Seltzer and Robin Hood All-Purpose Flour accounts, according to the Advertising Hall of Fame. He went on to work at several agencies, including Leo Burnett and FCB, before founding Burrell Communications Group in 1971.

He retired in 2004 and currently serves as chairman emeritus for the agency, which is now led by co-CEOs Fay Ferguson and McGhee Williams Osse and CCO Lewis Williams. Burrell Communications Group currently counts McDonald’s, P&G, Comcast, Walmart, Toyota Motor Sales Inc., AARP and Hilton among its client roster.

In addition to his work in advertising, Burrell is the author of Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority and founded nonprofit The Resolution Project to “challenge and reverse ongoing mass media stereotypes and negative race-based conditioning.”

13293: Putting The BS In CBS.

Adweek reported CBS Entertainment President Glenn Geller admitted his network must do better with diversity, as five new shows feature White men. Hey, when it comes to diversity and inclusion, CBS is still doing waaaaay better than WPP, IPG, MDC, DDB, FCB, JWT, BBH, W+K, BBDO, CP+B, GS&P, GSD&M and every other SOB on Madison Avenue and beyond. Ironically, CBS employed iconic graphic designer Georg Olden from 1945-1960.

CBS Chief Says Network ‘Needs to Do Better’ When It Comes to Diversity in Its Shows

Fall slate has 5 new series starring white guys

By Jason Lynch

In one of the most contentious sessions of the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour so far, CBS Entertainment president Glenn Geller was repeatedly questioned about the lack of diversity in his network’s fall slate, which features five new shows starring white men.

“We’re very mindful at CBS about the importance of diversity and inclusion,” said Geller. “We need to do better, and we know it.”

Geller repeated some version of “we need to do better” at least seven separate times in response to questions from reporters about his fall shows, which star Matt LeBlanc, Kevin James, Michael Weatherly, Dermot Mulroney and Joel McHale.

“I am acknowledging we need to be do better,” said Geller, who said the cast ensembles overall are more diverse than in previous seasons. “That is our commitment to diversity. Those aren’t just words. That is real action.”

Geller’s words seemed to ring hollow a day after FX CEO John Landgraf told TCA reporters that in the space of several months, his network had made a concerted effort to correct its lack of female and nonwhite directors. As a result, more than half of FX and FXX’s episode directors are now women or nonwhite.

“I think we have made that commitment” to improving diversity as well, insisted Geller. He said CBS has fared better behind the camera, with directors and writers, but struggled when asked why all of his new showrunners were white men. “Sometimes our showrunners are diverse; sometimes our showrunners are not diverse,” he said.

In part to blunt some of the criticism that the network knew would be coming from reporters, Geller had announced CBS added 16 new regular cast roles to new and recurring series, 11 of which were people of color. “We are not trying to make up for something,” he said.

CBS, which finished No. 1 last season in total viewers and in the 18-49 demo, has five new dramas this season “from very procedural genres” including crime, medical, legal and adventure. “Each has the potential to reach the broadest audience possible,” said Geller.

Geller praised The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’s “daring and creatively impressive two weeks of live shows,” and noted that they generated the show’s two biggest viral clips to date: Jon Stewart’s surprise guest appearance and Laura Benanti’s impersonation of Melania Trump.

“Chris Licht has been an outstanding addition as showrunner of the Late Show,” said Geller. “We’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished here.”

CBS will continue Late Show’s live-show momentum by broadcasting it live three times in the fall: following the first and third presidential debates (on Sept. 26 and Oct. 19), and after the vice presidential debate on Oct. 4.

In other CBS late-night news, James Corden’s next Carpool Karaoke passenger will be Britney Spears. Her segment will air on The Late Late Show With James Corden on Thursday, Aug. 25.

Geller said summer drama Zoo has been renewed for a third season, which will air next summer. The series is “very popular on Netflix and with international audiences,” said Geller. No decision was made about underperforming BrainDead and American Gothic.

Big Brother was renewed for two more seasons to be broadcast in the summers of 2017 and 2018. That’s in addition to a digital-only series of the show that will air on CBS All Access this fall.

CBS is jumping into the true-crime genre kickstarted by Making a Murderer and The People v. O.J. Simpson with The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey, as original investigators and other experts re-examine the case. The six-hour docuseries debuts Sunday, Sept. 18, the night before the new season kicks off.

The Big Bang Theory is the No. 1 comedy on TV, but the cast’s contracts are up for renewal after the coming season. Geller, however, isn’t worried. “We are very confident that everyone involved wants more Big Bang past year 10, and I know [studio] Warner Bros. will make those deals,” he said.

After letting Supergirl fly to The CW for Season 2, the network hasn’t closed the door on that genre. “If we heard the right superhero pitch and we thought it was for us, we would absolutely buy it,” said Geller.

12581: Early Black Mad Men.

From The New York Times…

An Early History of Blacks on Madison Avenue

Q. I was reading about the new “Mad Men” exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image, and I got to wondering: When did blacks manage to break down the barriers on Madison Avenue and become ad executives?

A. By the early 1950s, more than 40 black men were employed in “special markets” for American corporations, according to “Madison Avenue and the Color Line: African Americans in the Advertising Industry,” by Jason Chambers.

Some, like Moss Kendrix of Coca-Cola, helped create advertising approaches to blacks. Sometimes, their work consisted of keeping outright racism out of ads. A pioneer, David J. Sullivan, ran his own consulting firm, Negro Market Organization, on Fifth Avenue in the 1940s, and his dos-and-don’ts articles in the trade press spotlighted offensive marketing.

Mr. Chambers highlighted several black advertising men who struggled to open doors in the 1940s and 1950s. Among them:

Edward Brandford, a Cooper Union graduate and commercial artist, with two partners, Barbara Watson and Mary Louise Yabro, organized the first modeling agency for African-American women in 1946 in Manhattan; he followed it with his own ad agency. Unfortunately, companies eager to hire his models had little interest in his guidance. Most thought that all they had to do to reach black consumers was change the race of the models in their ads.

Like Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Brandford was ahead of his time.

William B. Graham had been a spectacular salesman for Pabst Beer in the early 1940s, making it the No. 1 brand in Harlem. He opened his own agency in 1944 with a fellow Pabst sales representative, Henry Parks Jr., who later became a famous sausage maker.

Clarence Holte was hired as an executive by Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn in the early 1950s, a move that caused considerable attention in the advertising trade press. “What BBDO executives wanted was their own version of Jackie Robinson — specifically, a man who was not only supremely qualified, but who they also believed could withstand any negativity based on his race without responding aggressively,” Mr. Chambers writes.

Mr. Holte drew on his vast collection of books on African and African-American history to create ads that brought attention to black achievements. “Ingenious Americans,” an award-winning series that he developed for Calvert Distillers, noted contributions that were ignored by textbooks at the time, including those of Harriet Tubman, Benjamin Banneker and others.

Another black executive at BBDO, Georg Olden, had been a graphic art director at CBS, helping to shape the look of early television. Joining BBDO in 1960, he was involved in all elements of commercial production. He won several Clio awards, the Oscars of the ad industry, and is said to have been the designer of the Clio statuette.

In his spare time, Mr. Olden drew several cartoons published in The New Yorker. In 1963, he joined the McCann-Erickson agency, and that year he became the first African-American to design a postage stamp, a broken chain commemorating the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation.

In 1955, Young & Rubicam hired Roy Eaton, a Phi Beta Kappa with a master’s degree in music from Yale. Mr. Eaton, who applied to the agency virtually on a whim, talked executives into letting him write tryout ad copy, and then sample jingles.

Charles Feldman, the agency’s creative director, hired him as its first black professional. According to Mr. Chambers, Mr. Feldman told the new employee: “The reason I had you write the jingles is that, though you obviously have creative talent, if you were white you would have been hired immediately, just on the basis of the commercials you wrote. But I want a Jackie Robinson. I want someone who is not only good, but superior!”

While pressure in the late 1960s and the 1970s forced some change, blacks remain underrepresented among ad executives, according to Mr. Chambers, who writes: “Similar to blacks’ experience in other white-collar professions like accounting, evidence shows that the advertising industry has dealt proactively with issues of race only when public pressure forces it to do so.”

6446: Celebrating The Olden Days.

AdAge.com published an excerpt from Madison Avenue and the Color Line by Jason Chambers. The excerpt spotlights adman Georg Olden, whose career included stints at CBS, BBDO and McCann Erickson. Check it out. Or better yet, buy the book.