12927: Info Power To The People.

From Advertising Age…

For Cathy Hughes, Information Is Power for Black Community

Her Biggest Challenge: ‘Everybody’s in the Black Programming Lane’

By Rance Crain

Entertainment alone doesn’t cut it in the radio business, according to the woman who heads the biggest black-owned broadcast company in the U.S.

Cathy Hughes, founder and chairperson of Radio One, contends that one of the problems that has plagued the African-American community is lack of information.

“I think that when we have the proper facts and figures we will make the right decisions,” she said, “but usually by the time we get the information it’s black history, not current events.”

So, she told me during a video interview prior to her induction into the Advertising Hall of Fame in the spring, pure entertainment “doesn’t serve a purpose.”

She pointed out that the black community has never had a national daily newspaper, so “I had to figure out how to diplomatically dispense information and weave it into a blanket of information so I wouldn’t lose the attention factor.”

Ms. Hughes said her biggest challenge is that “everybody’s in the black programming lane.” Radio One, in addition to its 54 radio stations and nine syndicated shows, operates cable channel TV One and an interactive division. Last month marked the company’s 35th anniversary. Ms. Hughes said every cable channel on the dial now has some form of black programming. And sponsors are interested. But at the same time, iHeartMedia “thinks they’re the experts on black radio. So I have competitors that I have never seen before. It’s a little easier to secure major sponsorships and advertising, but it’s still very difficult.”

One of the problems with advertisers, she said, is that although they recognize black consumers as trendsetters, they only allocate about 1% of their budgets to black programming. Advertisers believe that they can reach the urban market with general-market advertising.

But, Ms. Hughes pointed out, “just because an advertiser reaches a consumer does not mean they have touched that consumer… There’s a big difference between reaching and touching.”

Ms. Hughes liked radio from an early age, when she was eight years old and her mother gave her a transistor radio. She would lock herself in the bathroom and use the toothbrush for a microphone. She wouldn’t come out until she had delivered all the commercials and the news, and said goodbye to the audience, which was her mirror.

Ms. Hughes grew up in the projects in Omaha, the daughter of a professional musician mother who married a high-school dropout. Her mom put her dad through college and he became the first black CPA in the state of Nebraska.

At 16, she became pregnant. “I thought I knew everything. I was only concerned with what looked good on me, who looked good with me. But once I got pregnant I had to shift my priorities, and for the first time in my life I had to think beyond myself.

“And it was the best training ground I could have ever had, because once I was able to do that with [my son], I was able to do that with my entire family. I consider my staff my family, my extended family. I do that with my community initiatives and efforts. It became second nature for me, because before I was 21 I was putting someone else first.”

That proved to be a pretty good formula. After working at an Omaha station while attending college, the dean of Howard University’s school of communications hired her not only as a lecturer but also general sales manager of the Howard radio station. In two years Ms. Hughes increased revenue from $250,000 to $3 million, and she was appointed head of the station, becoming Washington D.C.’s first female general manager.

In 1980 Ms. Hughes and her then-husband bought a struggling station, WOL-AM. At one point, after she lost her house and car because of sky-high interest rates, she and her son moved into WOL’s offices, where they cooked on a hot plate and slept in sleeping bags on the floor.

And she also became a successful talk-show host, relying on more talk than music in keeping with her motto “Information is power.”

Her proudest achievement has been “rearing and grooming my son to embrace my dream and take over the mantle of leadership of my company.” She gives credit to her son, Alfred Liggins, for convincing her to take the company public. When advertisers tell him they don’t want to buy, he says “it simply means they haven’t made up their minds correctly.”

And through it all, Cathy Hughes still thinks of herself as “a work in progress.”

12650: Hall Of Famer Spike Lee.

From Advertising Age…

Spike Lee on Clients, the Knicks and the Need for Change in Adland

Writer and Director Inducted into Advertising Hall of Fame

By Rance Crain

Let me set the stage: Spike Lee showed up for our interview dressed for the pages of GQ—rainbow-colored shoes, a grey coat with bright tie and white shirt, leopard-spotted glasses and a beret. If his vibe sent a signal of accessibility, it would be strictly on his own terms, I soon found out.

My interview got off to a less than auspicious start. “That’s not a current quote,” he said when I asked him about his observation that advertisers have to slip in the message because consumers don’t want ads to dictate to them.

His current thinking is “people seem to be conducive to branded content, long-form instead of the same old 30-second spots. And a lot of these branded pieces, you don’t even know who the company is until the credit comes at the end. I’ve done several of these for Chevrolet and Cadillac.”

But whether short-form or long-form, Spike—who was just inducted into American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Fame—said too many advertisers convince themselves they can reach black consumers with general advertising because they don’t know “the code.”

The code, he said, is about cultural references. “You have to live it, you have to be part of it, and not just say that you have a very famous African-American friend. That’s faking the funk to me.”

So what needs to be done to push change? “Well, it’s going to have to take people who get it, people who don’t want to stay stuck in the ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ world, that world is gone. … As they say in Brooklyn, ‘dun,’ d-u-n.”

DDB gets it. Otherwise it wouldn’t have made the deal to start Spike-DDB, Spike said. “But … as a whole, the advertising agencies have not gotten it.”

The creator of the iconic Mars Blackmon TV spots for Nike said the only world that gets it is sports, “because the bottom line is, you can play or you can’t play.”

I couldn’t resist—“Like the Knicks can’t play?”

“We’re not talking about that now,” he replied.

“I mean there are black and brown people who are presidents of NBA, and baseball, and other pro sports organizations, GMs, scouts, coaches,” he said. “It’s not perfect but ... they put Hollywood to shame, they put television to shame, and they put the advertising world to shame.”

He said Phil Knight was discouraged by many from using Michael Jordan as the face of Nike because it would deter white consumers from buying Nike products.

Wouldn’t you think people would learn a lesson from that, I asked, to which he replied: “You need to be asking the people who are the heads of agencies that question, not me.”

I pointed out that we have asked them, and they always say they’re trying. “You know that line is so tired. That’s from the 1960s,” Spike said, adding a two-word verdict on agency claims they can’t find enough black and Hispanic talent: “It’s bullshit.”

Spike is currently working on a movie called “Chiraq,” which contrasts the war zones in Iraq and Chicago. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, among others, is not thrilled with the title.

“Not talking about that,” he said.

How come?

“Because I don’t want to.”

Why?

“I don’t talk about stuff until it happens. It’s a jinx, bad luck, bad karma.”

I pressed on. I’m just trying to get a story here, I said.

“No, I understand. That is absolutely your job, and it is also my job not to answer questions I’m not going to answer.” b I changed the subject. What does Spike think of viral media?

“Now that’s a good question,” he said.

“I would say that social media has changed the whole world, and not just advertising. I mean, it gives anybody access to as many people as they can get themselves in front of. And I want to take this opportunity to thank my daughter and son who prodded me into the modern world with social media. My children where the ones who said, ‘Daddy, you need to have Facebook. You need to be on Instagram. And thank God they did that because I’m able to reach people that I would not have been able to reach.”

He said he has 800,000 followers on Twitter and 100,000 on Instagram. “It’s good to engage with the people who support you. I don’t read Twitter that much because Twitter can be a very hateful place.”

Spike said social media has expanded his audience to the point where he now has an e-commerce store, Spike’s Joint. And he uses social media to promote his appearances so he doesn’t have to pay for publicity.

I asked him what he was proudest of. “I’m going to answer that, sir, like a parent. I’m proud of everything I’ve done, you know? Some were more successful than others, but there’s nothing I’ve done that I’m gonna hide my head, anything like that. You’ve got to be proud of what you do whether people like it or not, you know, stand behind your work.”

Once in a while, clients can get in the way. “I don’t mind clients having input, I just wish that they would know what they’re talking about. I would say 90% of the people I’ve worked with are great, but that 10%, they’re just displaying their ignorance about camera or lighting or whatever it is and they just let it be a big show of force for position.”

Spike wouldn’t name any of the lousy clients, but he cited Nike, Pepsi, Chevy, Cadillac, Major League Baseball, NFL and the New York Knicks as among the best.

I asked him if the Knicks dismal performance this season made them a hopeless case. “No, there’s always hope,” Spike Lee said. “Do Cubs fans have hope? They haven’t won since 1908. They still have hope. Wrigley Field continues to sell out because fans believe “this is gonna be the year. That’s hope.”

Then I asked what the Knicks needed to do to improve next year. “You’ve got to ask Phil Jackson. He’s the president. I don’t have a say.”

Well, you should, I said.

“There should be peace on Earth, too,” he responded.

11370: Rance Crain Reimagines America.

Advertising Age Editor-in-Chief Rance Crain published a column titled, “Merger Works For Omnicom, Publicis; Why Not U.S., Mexico?” Crain wondered if combining the two countries would help solve the problems connected with undocumented workers in the U.S. It’s unlikely Crain was completely serious in asking the title question, so here’s a not-completely-serious response.

The key and critical differences between a merger involving Omnicom and Publicis Groupe and a merger involving the U.S. and Mexico are rooted in culture, race, ethnicity and morality. Omnicom President and CEO John Wren and Publicis Groupe Chairman and CEO Maurice Lévy are essentially two Old White Guys—dos amigos (or gringos)—hooking up to make stupid money and inflate stupider egos. Contrary to the PR hype, Publicis Omnicom Groupe doesn’t give a flying fuck about the minions in the new network, especially the non-White populace. In fact, most of the U.S.-French holding company’s minorities are woefully underrepresented and filed into “multicultural” units where they receive less respect and far less compensation than their majority counterparts; in short, they are second-class citizens in every sense of the term. However, given the advertising industry’s existing power structure, it’s totally okay for two White men to orchestrate an exclusive alliance of two White corporations that further diminishes and ultimately disregards the welfare of non-White folks. On the flipside, if two White emperors attempted to merge their countries, resulting in the segregation and marginalization of minority groups, the very proposal would be condemned and rejected.

10692: More Proof Allstate’s Mayhem Sucks.

At Advertising Age, Rance Crain pondered the true value of advertising campaigns that generate hype—mostly for the responsible ad agencies—but don’t lead to sales. Crain spotlighted the Allstate Mayhem campaign as an example of the phenomenon. No surprise here, as MultiCultClassics has always questioned its effectiveness, criticized its awfulness and recognized its inherent weaknesses. Leo Burnett has successfully conned others into believing Mayhem is special, which might be the most skillful marketing associated with the campaign. As long as the ad agency’s PR efforts continue, actor Dean Winters is ensured a job. Ditto Dennis Haysbert, as the brand needs someone to sell the services.

Advertising Serves Many Masters, Creating Unintended Results

Famous Campaigns for Allstate, Burger King Have Done More for Agencies Than Marketers’ Bottom Lines

By Rance Crain

Advertising is getting to be a pretty complicated transaction these days. It serves many masters, and sometimes selling goods and services is the least important.

Often popular ads do more for the agency than the client. Or the messages are created with a higher purpose than just moving the merchandise. Or the ads serve as a jumping off place for a post-agency career.

Take Allstate Insurance’s “Mayhem” campaign as an example of ads that help the agency more than the client. It’s attracted a great deal of attention, but it hasn’t really moved the needle for Allstate. The insurer has lost market share for the past five years. As Crain’s Chicago Business pointed out, more ad spending puts more pressure on profits, “a fact not lost on investors wondering how ‘Mayhem’ can garner so much buzz (500,000 Facebook fans and nearly 10 million YouTube views) without boosting Allstate’s sales.”

The ads were intended to create doubt in people’s minds about cheaper competitors. But the endless display of one catastrophe after another drowns out any mention of the claim that the cut-rate boys don’t provide equal protection against mayhem or that there’s any advantage selecting Allstate over anybody else. That edge always goes to the category leader, which Allstate is not.

The commercials did have some beneficial effects. They entered the realm of popular culture, generating lots of publicity for Allstate. And they heightened the profile of the actor who plays Mayhem, Dean Winters.

But the biggest payoff might be for the agency that created the ads, Leo Burnett. When the commercials hit the airwaves in 2010, clients started asking for the agency that did “Mayhem.”

Off the mark

That’s the same reaction CP&B got from its Burger King ads. The campaign—really a series of viral promotions such as “Subservient Chicken”—did far more for CP&B than it ever did for the fast-food chain.

Ad Age named it the Agency of the Decade.

At the time, I thought CP&B’s stuff was off the mark. “The agency prides itself on being media-agnostic, which I’m beginning to think means that it would rather play around with cute little viral promotions than concentrate on one big idea that works powerfully across all media,” I wrote then. I wondered if the agency was a one-trick pony.

But now that former CP&B partner Alex Bogusky has made the move from a “brand advocate to a consumer advocate,” using those cute (if nothing else he always goes for cute) Coca-Cola bears as his foil, I can’t help but wonder if he ever had his heart in creating big-selling ideas for Burger King and other clients.

Burger King pretty much gave the agency carte blanche to do anything it wanted, and Bogusky took advantage of it. Back in 2006, marketers liked to talk about how they were turning over their brands to consumers. Russ Klein, then marketing boss at Burger King, said at an Association of National Advertisers confab that such a move enables “social connectivity” as a means of empowerment.

Can you imagine the mischief agencies can get into with those kinds of squishy directives? And it got squishier still at last month’s ANA conference when one speaker proclaimed that, “We have to stop looking at consumers as armpits that need deodorizing.”

But what, I ask you, could be a nobler mission, than for a product designed to please one’s olfactory nerves, and what could be a more noble cause than a company dedicating itself to anatomical rejuvenation?

What really caught my notice was our online survey indicating that 50% of respondents found Bogusky’s three-minute spot featuring the cola bears going to pot after guzzling sugar-laden soda pop “inspiring.” The other half called it hypocritical.

But if our readers really support such subversive tactics, look for even more mischief-making and nonproductive advertising to complicate the advertising transaction.

10597: AAF Hall Of Famers On Diversity.

At Advertising Age, Rance Crain talked with three AAF Hall of Famers—former TV One President and CEO Johnathan Rodgers, former Ogilvy & Mather North America Co-President and Chief Creative Officer Rick Boyko and Wieden + Kennedy Co-Founder David Kennedy—and the topics of conversation included diversity.

Rodgers acknowledged the lack of progress in the TV business, particularly for Black executives. “I love the fact that I may have been the first African-American to be the president of a network television division or executive producer,” said Rodgers. “But the dilemma becomes what I still am at this late point—the only one to have ever been.”

Regarding diversity on Madison Avenue, Boyko admitted he doesn’t see much progress at all. The adman believes the solution is to reach beyond colleges, targeting recruitment efforts at the high school level. Hey, what about kindergarten and daycare too? Nice to know you can confess to total ineffectiveness establishing inclusive workplaces, offer the same old solutions that have historically failed to create change and still land in the Hall of Fame.

Kennedy avoided delving into diversity altogether, opting instead to hype his association with Native Americans. In Kennedy’s opinion, “…the indigenous people of this part of the world have been trod upon and we need to pay back.” Gee, the same could be said about minorities and the advertising industry.

AAF Hall of Famers Grapple With Diversity in Ad, Media Industries

Insight From Advertising Hall of Fame Inductees

By Rance Crain

When Johnathan Rodgers was a writer for Sports Illustrated, in the late 1960s, he wrote a piece titled “The Plight of the Black Athlete.” At the time he joined SI as the magazine’s first African-American reporter, black athletes played a major role in sports.

“But in a way we didn’t,” he added.

“There were no black managers. There were no black coaches. And there existed this awful quota system by position and by roster. ... So when you talk about the plight of the black athlete, yeah, we were getting paid, and yes, we were performing, but it really was a system that, unfortunately, reflected the values of our country at the time.”

These days, Johnathan told me during an interview for his induction into the Advertising Hall of Fame, things “have changed significantly. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have more African-American coaches in the NBA than white coaches.”

“We clearly have black managers and Hispanic managers all throughout baseball; we’ve had them in football.” In one Super Bowl, he said, both coaches were black. “Now I think we should get more progress in the ownership area. And Michael Jordan, if you’re listening, we need better managers in the management area as well, so thank you for doing all you can, and let’s win.”

The veteran TV executive, who’s held major positions at CBS, Discovery and TV One, noted the same conditions exist in that industry. There have been “great advances” in black actors appearing on the TV screen, he said, but the black executive positions are as equally rare in the TV business as black professional sports.

NO CHANGE

“I love the fact that I may have been the first African-American to be the president of a network television division or executive producer. But the dilemma becomes what I still am at this late point—the only one to have ever been.”

Another Hall of Fame inductee this year, Rick Boyko, doesn’t see much progress anywhere in the advertising business. Mr. Boyko, who headed the VCU Brandcenter for 10 years, believes that to promote greater diversity in advertising the industry needs to focus on high school. He says there’s too much emphasis on college, “but we don’t do enough to get high-school students to really understand who we are, to talk to high-school counselors and to have minority parents understand that this is a good business.”

The problem, Mr. Boyko said, is that the industry is insulated. “We ... think that we’re really perceived to be a terrific career.”

To most people, though, “we’re not too far off from used-car salesmen and senators. And if we don’t change that perception, we can’t change parents’ minds,” Mr. Boyko said, noting that he came from a family in which nobody went to college. (Mr. Boyko went from high school to the Air Force before attending college—but never graduated.) Lots of minority parents are in the same place, having “never gotten to higher learning, so they want their children to go to higher learning. It’s not going to be to go for advertising, when the perception is that it’s a charlatan business. So we, as an industry, have to change that perception.”

PAYING BACK

Newly installed Hall of Famer David Kennedy is co-founder of Weiden & Kennedy, and although he’s been retired since 1995, he still keeps busy at the agency, working pro bono on the American Indian College Fund. Mr. Kennedy told me “it’s pretty much a full-time job. It’s more of a commitment than a job.”

What was his connection to Native American culture? “I grew up in Oklahoma, Colorado, states that were surrounded by a lot of reservations and I grew up immersed in native culture as a child. And it had a terrific influence on my life.”

But when he got into the “real world” he was separated from that connection. “Strangely enough, in 1990, December 19, I got a letter from the director of the American Indian College Fund, wondering if we could take them on as our pro bono account.

“It was absolutely perfect timing. I was upset with being stuck in meetings all day. I wouldn’t get any work done. I couldn’t create. ... So it was a chance for me to work on something that I really believed in and had been disconnected with for many years.”

Mr. Kennedy thinks that “when an agency like ours reaches a point where we have established strong relationships with creative forces in our business, if we can’t draw upon that relationship for the good of mankind then what’s the use? I think that my career in advertising means nothing if I can’t do something good with it.”

It’s been hundreds of years since the first Europeans set foot on this continent, and Mr. Kennedy said “the indigenous people of this part of the world have been trod upon and we need to pay back.”

10074: O. Burtch Drake Saluted Despite Failure.

Advertising Age Editor-in-Chief Rance Crain interviewed former 4A’s honcho O. Burtch Drake on his induction into the Advertising Hall of Fame. Here’s an excerpt:

The ad industry’s major hot potato is diversity, and I asked Burtch why it has been such a difficult issue. “I think the biggest challenge is that the advertising agency business does not appear to be really attractive to young minorities yet, despite all the efforts of the portfolio schools, the scholarships that the 4A’s are putting up, the work the AAF is doing. I don’t know. Nobody has cracked the nut, and it doesn’t seem to be, frankly, getting any better.”

Net takeaway: You can admit failing to make meaningful progress with industry diversity—and confess to being clueless on solutions—yet still get inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame.

9550: Caballero Translates Latino Market.

From Advertising Age…

Ad Pioneer Eduardo Caballero on the Intricacies and Potential of the Hispanic Market

Advertising Hall-of-Famer Talks About the Past Struggles and Future Ahead

By Rance Crain

Advertisers, ignoring “the reality of this country,” hoped at one time that the Hispanic market would disappear.

“They had had some experience with the Jewish market, with the Italian market, and they thought it would happen the same with the Spanish market.”

That’s the view of Eduardo Caballero, founder of Caballero Radio & Television, from his perch as operator of the nation’s only unwired network of independent TV stations aimed at the Hispanic market.

Advertisers kept the faith that Hispanics would assimilate into the general population, as Jews and Italians did, Eduardo told me in a video interview on the occasion of his induction into the Advertising Hall of Fame.

What advertisers failed to realize, Eduardo explained, was that with Hispanics, “it was not only a matter of language, it was a matter of culture, and it was a matter of music, and it was a matter of food.” For his efforts to persuade advertisers to buy time on his TV stations, “it was very, very difficult.”

And even today, he said, “we find some advertisers that are not inclined to do anything in the Spanish market. And many of those who are doing something in the Spanish market are not doing it to the extent they should. Sometimes I consider that to be tokenism.”

Now that the Hispanic advertising and media market has grown into a $5 billion business, Eduardo’s efforts are gaining more attention, but he added that “the obstacle we still have to overcome” is the resistance of some young people running Hispanic divisions. He said they are often not attuned to the cultural differences of the Hispanic consumer.

What it all boils down to, Eduardo told me, is that “it’s not a matter of reaching people. It’s a matter of selling to people. So they are not selling to me. They are not selling me the product when they are talking to John Doe. They are not talking to Eduardo Caballero.”

Among his accomplishments—he also started a Spanish-TV music video and entertainment network—Eduardo was the driving force behind the formation of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies.

The late Bob Goldstein, once the head marketing guy at Procter & Gamble, called him a couple of weeks before he died in a white-water rafting accident. Bob needed Eduardo’s help putting together a group of Hispanic ad agencies to work with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

The Hispanic agencies came together for a good cause and after that, Eduardo said he “realized that they were not that reluctant to get together.” He decided that he was going to try to do something so they’d work as a group, rather than one against the other. “There was a cannibalism as to what existed rather than to go and try to expand the market.”

When the Hispanic ad group was formed there were about 40 such agencies; now there are 70—not that many more. The reason, Eduardo explained, is that the agencies “made a mistake. And it was against my advice.” They used Nielsen and Arbitron numbers on Hispanic audiences, but “there is an aspect that goes beyond numbers, and that is the culture aspect.” What happened, he said, is that the buying of Spanish-language media fell into the hands of general-market agencies.

“Some of them are doing a good job. Most of them are not doing a good job. They don’t have the infrastructure. They don’t have the resources to do a good job.

“And I say that with all respect, because they have tried. But one thing is trying and another thing is being able to accomplish it.” What the general-market agencies were able to do was cut their rates so the Hispanic agencies had a hard time competing with them.

Eduardo pointed out that the Hispanic population in the U.S. is the second-youngest in the world (Mexico is the youngest). Advertisers, he said, should start cultivating the young Hispanic people here not only in Spanish but also in English. “And they should do it in a way that will be acceptable to both the young and the older.”

9144: Money Talk & More With Earl G. Graves.

Advertising Age President and Editor-in-Chief Rance Crain interviewed Black Enterprise Founder and Publisher Earl G. Graves, who was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame this year. BTW, why did it take so freaking long to include Graves in the elitist club?

Earl Graves on the Importance of Black-Owned Media

The Newest Member of the Advertising Hall of Fame on the ‘Paucity of Publications’ Reaching an Audience Hungry for Information

By Rance Crain

There are definite advantages to publishing a magazine aimed at a black audience.

That’s the opinion of Earl G. Graves Sr., the founder and publisher of Black Enterprise and one of this year’s inductees into the Advertising Hall of Fame.

“Because there’s such a paucity of African-American magazines that are out there, I don’t think we are going to have the diminution that some of our fellow publishers might have,” Mr. Graves told me in a video interview. There’s Ebony and Jet, Black Enterprises and Essence (no longer African-American-owned).

“And so there’s a paucity of publications that are really first class that are reaching an audience more and more hungry for information.” But, he added, that audience wasn’t always appreciated.

“When I was first out selling Black Enterprise, I had people that would ask me, ‘What black business class?’ and they would ask me, ‘What black professionals?’ And I actually had people tell me in the very beginning that they didn’t want to associate their brand with the African-American market.”

But some advertisers signed up. Mr. Graves told Fortune Small Business in 2003 that Black Enterprise’s first long-term advertiser, Carter Products, wrote a check for a full year of ads before the magazine hit newsstands. Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Mr. Graves said, “were supposed to be so effective that even after you died your liver would still be flapping around and you’d have to beat it to death with a stick. In that first year we had $900,000 in ad revenues, and the magazine was profitable by its tenth issue.”

And on the race-relations front, progress was being made. At the Hall of Fame dinner, Bill Cosby was presented the President’s Award for Special Lifetime Contributions to Advertising. “What Bill Cosby did was to convince all of America to like Jell-O. And now we have an African-American president. And that’s not to say that Jell-O had anything to do with making Mr. Obama president, but the environment was there in order to let that happen,” Mr. Graves observed.

So compared to what he encountered back in the ‘70s, when he started Black Enterprise, “we’re making enormous progress in this country. … I never really, quite honestly, thought that we would see an African-American president in my lifetime. I was thrilled to be able to contribute to his campaign,” he said.

Mr. Graves has built an impressive media operation. In addition to the magazine, the family business includes a book-publishing house (he wrote the best-seller “How to Succeed in Business Without Being White”), two syndicated TV shows and business and lifestyle events. He also co-founded a private-equity fund with Citigroup to invest in minority businesses.

So does he see the day when he would align himself with a larger publisher? “Not at this time. These are very tough times, I want to be very clear. And were it not for the other entities we’re involved in, it would be difficult. The events that we have. The internet, which obviously is a big thing and which my son is still explaining to me how it works, in terms of why it will make the money that he thinks it will.” (Mr. Graves has three sons in the business.)

He added that “there’s something to be said for an entity which is owned by people who don’t look like everybody else. … I want my grandchildren to tell their children about what we did at Black Enterprise and how we brought people together at conferences, and how our Women of Power conference, which we have every year, is probably one of our most dynamic. You know, black and white women, when they decide to do something, they get on with it.”

Mr. Graves said he “married over my head. My wife, Barbara, is my partner. She has made an enormous difference in my life. I love her more each day.” He and his wife “are set back with cancer right now,” and she is undergoing radiation treatment. But “she gets up every morning, she’s out the door by the time I get out of bed, going right over to get the treatment, and then coming right back. You wouldn’t know—you might think she went down to the laundromat.”

Mr. Graves doesn’t think now is the best time to start a new magazine. “We’re bringing along a generation that doesn’t want to cuddle up in bed with a magazine—they want everything that’s quick. And I think that’s unfortunate. I don’t think they have a chance to relax and see life a little bit slower. And my sense is the country’s not going to be the better for it. They’re not going to enjoy the kind of things that my wife and I did growing up.”

8834: Laurel Cutler Cuts to The Chase.

From Advertising Age…

Laurel Cutler on How to Win in a Future With No Mass Market

Advertising Hall of Fame Inductee and Futurist on why Marketers Need to Be ‘Intensely Pleasing’ the Few

By Rance Crain

Laurel Cutler is a futurist, and she doesn’t like what she sees on the horizon and further out.

I was talking with Laurel at her Park Avenue apartment for a video interview on the occasion of her induction into the Advertising Hall of Fame, and I brought up something she said some years ago about consumers searching for “the deep that unites us.” But, she said back then, “we’re too occupied with what divides us and the differences that separate us.”

I said to Laurel that her words describe the current political landscape. She replied that they’re more true now than when she said them.

“I think we are so divided we are absolutely paralyzed now. I don’t know how to get out of it. I’m terribly discouraged. We all should be. Division ain’t gonna get us anywhere.

“You know, it took me a long time to understand that a group of medium intelligent people could outthink one genius. But it’s true. If you do it together and you collaborate, you can do extraordinary things. But we’re not together and we don’t collaborate, and we’re not getting anything done.”

Laurel contended that the most serious problem in the country “is the fact that the gap between the rich and the poor is so enormous, and the middle class has lost its footing. I think that is horrifying and tragic.”

Laurel has said that if the ‘80s were the Me Decade, the ‘90s were the Re Decade, as consumers renewed, restructured, reengineered and reprioritized “to regain a sense of control and simplify their lives.” So, I asked her, where are we now? She paused a moment and answered: “The No Decade.”

Laurel got into the futurist business by way of marketing planning. She was working for the ad agency Leber Katz Partners (which later merged with Foote, Cone & Belding), and she was the first person to bring marketing planning to the U.S. “I didn’t invent marketing planning. It was being done all over the U.K., and being done particularly well by JWT in the U.K. I stole it. I absolutely stole it. I said, ‘Why aren’t we doing that in the United States? It’s a very good way to do advertising, and it would be new and revolutionary in the United States.’” The name, she said was Stanley Katz’s. “I hated the name. I would have called it planning. Marketing planning has always struck me as a terrible name. But Stan was usually right, and he was my boss.”

Stan Katz also played a big role in making Laurel one of the most prominent futurists in the industry. “He said to me one day, ‘Sit down and tell me what’s going to happen to the tobacco market in five years’ time.’ I said ‘How in the hell do I know?’ He said, ‘Figure it out.’ So he locked me in an office for 20 days, and I figured it out.”

Laurel said she has never been very popular with the research crowd “because I think research is after the fact, and what we did was before the fact. And I don’t think there is any available research on the future. You have to use your head and your thinking and history and guesswork. It’s really elaborate guesswork.”

Laurel also believes that now and in the future there is no mass market. “Delight the few, attract the many” is her mantra.

“You are a lot better off intensely pleasing a niche that can grow than you are boring most people. And if they’re not … intensely involved, they’re not going to buy it anyway. And we worry too much about offending the people who don’t care about the proposition to begin with.” Laurel has worked for General Motors, Chrysler and Ford, and she says the car companies “didn’t even think about the market they were dealing with. They didn’t acknowledge consumers. … When I was in Detroit they thought their customer was the dealer.”

Laurel maintains that the car guy’s job is to develop products that consumers either love or hate, rather than vehicles that everybody likes a little.

“That’s where mass businesses are. Nobody cares a hell of a lot, but nobody dislikes it enough to kill it. That’s the wrong proposition. The right proposition is marvelous. Only two people think so. [Then] there will be 10. There will be 40. There will be 100. There will be 1,000. There will be a business.”