13552: BHM 2017—Verizon.

Black History Month is child’s play for Verizon.

13551: WPPecksniffery.

Advertising Age reported WPP’s Mindshare drafted a “gender equality brief” that 87 offices will execute against, designing diverted diversity “ideas that really help advance gender equality through the lens of a brand.” Gee, what a novel endeavor. Leave it to a media agency to jump on the White women bandwagon and think it’s an original and breakthrough concept. What’s truly baffling is no one seems to see the outrageousness of promoting White women in a company currently dealing with a gender-based discrimination lawsuit and run by a fucking hypocrite whose annual compensation package makes the gender pay gap an infinite chasm. Oh, and the Mindshare team hardly reflects a female-friendly enterprise.

WPP’s Mindshare Works on Gender Equality Brief Across 87 Offices

By Lindsay Stein

WPP media agency Mindshare is using its annual Mindshare Day celebration to fight for gender equality across all 87 offices on Wednesday.

Every year, the shop selects an important cause to shape into a brief that staffers can work against on behalf of select clients. This time, the brief, which Mindshare North America Chief Strategy Officer Cindy Gustafson said “is one of the most spirited ones we’ve had,” is focused on gender equality. The topic was selected based on Mindshare employee feedback about what they’re passionate about and what’s going on in the world.

All 87 offices will “design ideas that really help advance gender equality through the lens of a brand,” said Ms. Gustafson, who added that some of the clients in North America include Unilever, General Mills and Nordstrom. In fact, Gail Tifford, VP of media and digital engagement for Unilever in North America, was a keynote speaker at Mindshare’s New York office today to kick off the celebration, as well as Rosie Rios, former U.S. treasurer under President Barack Obama.

Clients are “proactively” approached for the initiative based on what the agency knows about the brand and its business,” said Ms. Gustafson.

At the end of the day, each office will present its gender equality brand idea to a team of judges. In North America, the judges include the executive group and an amalgamation of discipline leads. Forty-eight hours later, one winner will be chosen per country or region, and then a global judging panel of executives will discuss which idea, if any, “has the ability to go on and become something bigger.”

Last year was a little different for Mindshare Day because the theme was around one organization, which was ideas to help Amnesty International. The winning global idea that went to market, which came out of Europe, was an adaptive print campaign based on Mindshare’s Planning for Agility process, which helps brands move at the speed of culture in their media plans.

Some other fun aspects of Mindshare Day include that office team and conference rooms are all renamed for the day after famous and culturally important women, such as Simone De Beauvoir, Susan B. Anthony, Malala Yousafzai, and even fictional characters like Mulan. Additionally, each office’s staff is broken up into “sub-teams” so that people have the chance to work with colleagues across different disciplines and accounts.

“We look at this as a kickoff to how we want to think about our efforts moving forward,” said Ms. Gustafson, who added that this “is not just a one-and-done thing” for Mindshare. She said gender equality has always been important to the agency, which hired 63% women last year. Mindshare’s marketing sciences team is also made up of half women and 55% of its managing directors in North America are women.

The gender brief was also important to WPP, she said, because the holding company struck a partnership with the U.N. last summer to “truly advance the cause with gender equality.”

13550: BHM 2017—Nationwide.

Technically, this is not a BHM advertisement; rather, it’s self-promotional pap from Nationwide, touting the insurance company’s sponsorship of the EBONY Power 100. The headline declares, “You Are Inspiring.” The advertisement, ironically, is uninspiring.

13549: Mostly White Village People.

Adweek published a story titled, “At Havas, It Takes a Village to Win So Many Accounts in So Little Time.” It’s a little sad that “It takes a village…” is an African proverb once hijacked by Hillary Clinton and now being used to spotlight an exclusively White media agency.

13548: BHM 2017—Publix.

Publix serves up the Black inventors angle for BHM.

13547: Monumental Bullshit From BBDO.

Adweek reported on more diverted diversity dedication from BBDO, with the White advertising agency pooping out patronizing propaganda to name more American landmarks after women. Such an opportunity to kiss the collective asses of clients, Cannes, conferences and commercial directors. BBDO showers White women with multimedia campaigns, while racial and ethnic minorities get a comic book. How thoughtful.

BBDO Launches an Eye-Opening Campaign to Name More American Landmarks After Women

92% of outdoor monuments are dedicated to men

By Patrick Coffee

Half of the 320 million-plus people living in the U.S. today are female, yet only 8 percent of outdoor public statues in this country are dedicated to women.

The same imbalance applies to street and building names, and other monuments. But if you weren’t aware of the gender disparity, you’re not the only one. BBDO New York president Kirsten Flanik tells AdFreak, “My mom, who is in her mid-70s, said, ‘This never even occurred to me.’”

In response, her agency decided to do something about it.

The newly launched “Put Her on the Map” project aims to bring more attention to famous females by naming more public properties after them, and highlighting the few that already pay tribute to historic American women.

This week, Andrew Robertson, BBDO Worldwide’s president and CEO, and Amy Elaine Wakeland, the First Lady of Los Angeles, debuted the film below at the Makers Conference, an annual AOL-sponsored event celebrating “the trailblazing women of today and tomorrow.”

The girls featured in the short illustrate the problem in the simplest, most compelling way—by trying to think of things named after women.

“We were really inspired by this year’s #BEBOLD theme, and we wanted to announce a bold idea that could leverage the power and influence of the people in the room to help create change. There’s never been a more important time to press the issue of gender equality,” Flanik says, adding that this year’s Makers event felt, in some ways, like an extension of last month’s Women’s March on Washington. Speaker Gloria Steinem, for example, opened her appearance with the following quote: “Women have always been an equal part of the past. We just haven’t been a part of history.”

“We thought it was a story that needed to be told more broadly,” Flanik says. “If girls can’t see it, they can’t be it.”

“Who better to help magnify this point than young girls?” adds BBDO executive creative director Lauren Connolly, who worked on the project. “Once you hear it directly from their mouths, you can understand the immediate reason why we need to honor women around our cities.”

“When successful women are not visible in our world, there is no precedent for female potential,” says Robertson. Makers founder, producer and documentary filmmaker Dyllan McGee adds, “We’re so thrilled to have BBDO join us at the 2017 Makers Conference, making such a bold statement with their initiative to ‘Put Her on the Map.’ By honoring leading females across the U.S., we help to inspire the next generation of trailblazing Makers.”

BBDO has been a sponsor of the Makers event for the past three years, and Flanik became a member of its board of directors last year. The Omnicom agency created and financed the “Put Her on the Map” project internally, choosing to debut the work at Makers in order to reach more influencers across industries.

Flanik notes that Megan Smith, who served as U.S. chief technology officer under President Obama, immediately expressed interest—as did Niantic, Inc., the company behind Pokemon Go. A corporate statement reads, “We will work with the Makers and BBDO teams to help put on a walk that highlights the history, art and culture behind impactful women, using our apps to guide people to unique, real-life locations.”

Several unnamed BBDO clients are in the early stages of conversations regarding potential “Put Her on the Map” collaborations, and Flanik says the Office of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is actively working on the project.

“They want to do their part to start bringing greater recognition to those things in L.A. already named after women,” Flanik tells AdFreak, adding that BBDO will continue producing content beyond the film above. “Hopefully it will be a story that continues.”

13546: BHM 2017—Nike.

Nike salutes Black History Month in two ways:

1. Its annual BHM collection.

2. Its Equality campaign that declares, “This field of play. … If we can be equals here, we can be equals everywhere.” Um, except when you’re talking about the advertising field. Now that’s fucked up!

13545: Return To Exclusivity.

Advertising Age reported on “Returnships”—the latest diverted diversity device designed to help White women advance in the advertising industry. The story was actually titled, “How ‘Returnships’ Are Helping Agencies Bridge Diversity Gap.” However, the “diversity gap” is really the alleged gender gap in a field where women already comprise roughly 47 percent of the workforce. Thank goodness there’s now a deliberate effort to help women return to the job after taking time off to raise families or pursue other activities. For racial and ethnic minorities, however, there’s no chance to return when you’ve never been allowed in the game to begin with.

How ‘Returnships’ Are Helping Agencies Bridge Diversity Gap

By Adrianne Pasquarelli

Darcie Lamond left an executive-level business and consulting position at a major financial services company to raise her family. A decade later, when she was ready to rejoin the workforce in 2014, she had trouble finding a job.

“It was tough, it was very tough to get people to look at you seriously because there was this sense of, ‘Your skills are dated, you don’t know how the world works anymore,’ ” she said. “That was frustrating.”

Then she found Linda Wells, an executive recruiter with 11 years at Stanford University’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, who was successfully reintegrating women into the workforce with “returnships” via her new company, Talent Reconnect. She introduced Ms. Lamond to Matt Bijarchi, who was trying to grow his Los Angeles-based ad agency, Blend, after founding the shop in 2013. Mr. Bijarchi brought Ms. Lamond on for a short-term returnship—and the rest is history. Within two years, she rose through the ranks at the 15-person agency to become partner last year.

Returnship programs offer caregivers, usually women, a means to re¬enter the workforce after taking time off to raise children. The paid program usually lasts three or four months.

The concept can represent a win-win: Women get more current experience in rejoining industry, and employers get experienced executives they couldn’t otherwise afford.

In the ad world specifically, it’s one possible solution to one of the industry’s vexing problems—lack of diversity—as marketers and agencies grapple with how to make their workforces less homogeneous and more authentic representations of modern consumers.

Much of the demand can be attributed to marketers pressuring their agency partners for more equal representation between women, minorities and white men. Last year, for example, General Mills, Verizon and HP demanded that their agencies meet diversity requirements—or face loss of business. More brands are expected to follow their lead in the coming months.

New recruiting companies like Path Forward, a nonprofit founded a year ago that helps midcareer women find jobs across a variety of industries, are taking a page from similar staffing programs at banks such as Goldman Sachs, which began offering returnships in finance nearly a decade ago.

But advertising in particular has been a tough industry for women to crack.

“It’s hard for women who have taken a few years off from marketing careers to get back in,” said Tami Forman, founder and executive director of Path Forward, which employs four staffers and also provides transitional career support to women enlisting in a returnship program.

“Many ad agencies have great parity in their [employees’] first five years, where all account execs, juniors and creative folks are women,” Ms. Forman said. “But then as you move up, you see that job becomes untenable for someone who is trying to raise a family—they drop out and can’t get back in.”

Some returnship hosts have initially been skeptical.

“It sounded too good to be true. We’re always trained to think, if [workers] haven’t been in the job market, that’s not good, there’s something wrong,” said Mr. Bijarchi. “It’s been the best decision I’ve made.”

Clients have been requesting more feedback from women, he added, citing in particular emerging tech brands that are eager to know how older demographics interact with their products. Blend is now comprised of 11 men and four women.

“Marketers want to hear from non-technically phobic senior female executives about what they should be doing with their brands in 2017,” said Mr. Bijarchi.

Of the 20 returnships Ms. Wells has placed with her company over the past three years, eight have been in marketing roles.

The bigger issue for women, Ms. Wells noted, is getting more flexibility from employers in the first place when they become parents, so that taking time off and then reentering the workforce is not necessary. But that would require a bigger cultural shift, one explicitly aimed at giving more women a chance to simultaneously advance in their careers and raise families.

Unless and until that happens, returnships also give agencies a chance to prove that they are serious about diversity by bringing in more senior-level talent.

HP, for one, wants to see women in manager positions at its agencies.

“Top brand CMOs are not idiots—you’re not going to be able to snow these guys by bringing in a bunch of 24-year-olds,” said Ms. Forman of Path Forward.

“They find they get people that have different perspectives, not just because they’re women, but because they have taken time away and have more life experience,” she said.

13544: BHM 2017—Macy’s.

Macy’s salutes Black History Month—and damn near every other minority celebration.

13543: Adland ‘17 Is Whiter Than Ever.

Campaign published a report titled, “This is adland ‘17: Part two: Ethnicity”—the colored companion to its examination of the White women bandwagon cruising through the industry. The data is dodgy, in that adland is segregated into two silos: White and BAME—an acronym for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic, which makes it difficult to determine specific percentages for non-White segments.

Key takeaways from the report include:

• BAME representation has decreased in the past two years.

• Campaign stated, “BAME individuals make up about 14% of the UK population, but most of the larger agencies are based in London, where this percentage is higher.” In other words, the reduction of BAMEs at White advertising agencies in London is fucked up.

• Campaign stated, “This research only captures data on gender and ethnicity. Of course, diversity is far broader than this. It is not even limited to sexual orientation, age, disability or socioeconomic background—all topics Campaign has covered extensively—but about respecting individuals and the different qualities they bring to work.” In other words, expect old White people, disabled people, LGBT and diverse thinkers to ultimately leapfrog over racial and ethnic minorities in the years ahead.

• IPA President Tom Knox stated, “The good news is that, at the most junior level, the representation of individuals coming from a BAME background is at the national level of 15%. However, the big issue is that this figure is only 4.7% in the most senior roles and 5.5% in other executive management.” In other words, look for a spike in outreach programs targeting inner-city toddlers.

Finally, the Campaign report was illustrated with a clichéd image of colorful hands (enhanced and depicted above), underscoring the dismal dearth of dark-skinned people in adland. Rainbow-colored people are more likely to land advertising jobs than Blacks.

13542: BHM 2017—CBRW.

Not sure why Black History Month only receives a Chicago Black Restaurant Week, but don’t let that deter you from celebrating.

13541: V Is For Vomit.

Not sure what inspired this clichéd and contrived campaign for V Energy Drink by TKT in Australia. But a peek at the agency team indicates it could be a case of cultural cluelessness from White people who love hip hop.

13540: BHM 2017—Vogue.

Okay, it’s technically not a Black History Month moment, but the Vogue “diversity cover” controversy is worth spotlighting. Plus, it seems like Vogue produced a second-rate knock off of the iconic “Black Girls Rule” theme from Trace magazine.

13539: Award-Winning Bias Bullshit.

Advertising Age reported other predominately White award shows jumped on the White women bandwagon and joined the gender bias ban embraced by Cannes. The revolution includes diverted diversity demonstrators like Deutsch North American Chief Creative Officer Pete Favat, whose White advertising agency actually fired its Chief Diversity Officer. When will the gender bias ban extend to disqualify agencies that demonstrate bias in hiring practices?

Advertising Club of NY, Andy Awards Ask Other Award Shows to Ban Gender Bias

Cannes Announced Gender Bias Ban With Help from #WomenNotObjects on Monday

By Lindsay Stein

Pete Favat, chairman of the 2017 International Andy Awards, and Gina Grillo, president and CEO of the Advertising Club of New York, are asking other industry award shows to ban work that reflects gender bias.

Earlier this week, Ad Age reported that the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has agreed to tell all jurors in their briefings before judging not to recognize work that objectifies or perpetuates negative and harmful inequalities related to gender. The gender bias ban resulted in part from petition written after last year’s Cannes Lions by Badger & Winters Chief Creative Officer Madonna Badger, who helped ignite the gender conversation with her “#WomenNotObjects” initiative in early 2016.

The statement from Mr. Favat and Ms. Grillo states that they “enthusiastically support the ban and request that the One Show, the Art Director’s Club, The Clios, the London International Awards and the D&AD awards stand with us to eliminate this problem that negatively impacts our industry. Let’s continue to fight for #WomenNotObjects. Together we can all make a difference. #Impart.”

Mr. Favat, Deutsch North American chief creative officer, will also serve as the president of the Cannes 2017 Film Lions jury. With the new gender criteria in place, each jury will have to affirm that they believe the work does not objectify women or perpetuate gender bias.

13538: BHM 2017—USPS.

For Black History Month, the United States Postal Service once again mailed it in with commemorative stamps. Wonder if Dorothy Height beat out Wonder Woman.

13537: BHM 2017—Bank Of America.

This Bank of America advertisement is technically not for BHM; rather, it salutes the bank’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer for being recognized in the 2016 EBONY POWER 100 list. But the headline quote from Lonnie G. Bunch III takes on added meaning when applied to the African American experience in the advertising industry.

13536: GE BBDO BS.

Adweek reported on a GE commercial from BBDO via a headline that read: “GE Imagines a World Where We Treat Female Scientists Like Celebrities.” Is BBDO sucking up to its other client, HP? Hey, BBDO should also create a commercial imagining a world where Black celebrities are treated like advertising executives. Oh, wait a minute—that world actually exists. BTW, the credits for the BBDO commercial indicate all the key creatives on the project are men.

13535: BHM 2017—Mickey D’s.

Mickey D’s salutes prominent Blacks by declaring, “It is through their example, that we are all a little more enlightened.” Yes, but the enlightenment does not extend to the fast feeder’s White advertising agency.

13534: Badgering Bullshit.

Advertising Age reported on the latest diverted diversity directive designed to ban gender bias at Cannes. The declaration was spearheaded Badger & Winters Chief Creative Officer Madonna Badger, who proclaimed, “This will make every ad agency rethink the type of advertising they’re doing and whether or not it’s award-winning, and because Cannes is the absolute Oscars of advertising, they will set the tone for all the other awards all over the world.” How fitting that Badger would reference the Oscars, which has mirrored the advertising industry by historically excluding racial and ethnic minorities from its festivities. The Academy Awards, however, made dramatic and deliberate efforts to change. In contrast, Madison Avenue and Cannes dodge the dearth of diversity by promoting White women and handing out trophies for doing so.

Cannes Bans Gender Bias With Help from #WomenNotObjects

By Lindsay Stein

The ad industry’s largest annual event and awards program, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, has agreed to caution jurors not to recognize work that reflects gender bias.

“Work that objectifies, perpetuates negative and harmful inequalities and gender bias hurts all of us,” the festival will now tell all jurors in their briefings before judging. “The criteria for knowing if a submission is objectifying or gender-biased is empathy. Use your heart and mind to determine if the submission is acceptable to you. What if the person portrayed in image or copy was you? Or your daughter or son, sister, father or mother … would you be O.K. with the portrayal? Do you feel they are being treated as whole, human and equal, and how you would like to be treated?”

The new guidance comes amid a roiling conversation about sexual equality and gender bias in advertising, both in employment and in representations of gender roles in ads. And it results from a petition written after last year’s Cannes Lions by Badger & Winters Chief Creative Officer Madonna Badger, who helped ignite the gender conversation with her “#WomenNotObjects” initiative started a little over a year ago.

The 2016 Cannes Lions included an award for Bayer ads by AlmapBBDO that were roundly decried as sexist. One, for example, said, “‘Don’t worry babe, I’m not filming this’.mov” above two boxes of aspirin. They were so-called scam ads, created for the purposes of entering awards contests, and they were subsequently disowned by Bayer and the prize was returned. But their recognition at Cannes, and plenty of more subtly sexist advertising in the real world, helped fuel more than 1,000 signatures for Ms. Badger’s petition.

“This will make every ad agency rethink the type of advertising they’re doing and whether or not it’s award-winning, and because Cannes is the absolute Oscars of advertising, they will set the tone for all the other awards all over the world,” Ms. Badger said.

Philip Thomas, CEO of Cannes Lions parent company Ascential Events, who previously served as chief executive of Lions Festivals for nearly 10 years and ran last year’s Festival of Creativity, said the organization worked with Ms. Badger to craft the new criteria.

“She’s a hugely respected figure for the work she’s done and the position she’s taken in the industry, so we’d been talking about the best way to position this and bring it to people’s attention,” he said.

When Mr. Thomas saw one of the “#WomenNotObjects” presentations, Ms. Badger said, he was “astonished at how ads in the ‘50s used to show naked women selling cigarettes, and today they show naked women selling shoes—the same mentality is still happening.”

Including the criteria in jury briefings felt like a natural step for the festival because it has been working on gender issues for a number of years, Mr. Thomas said. In 2015, Cannes added the Glass Lion: The Lion for Change, which rewards outstanding efforts challenging gender biases, and a year before that, it launched the See It Be It mentorship initiative for young women. Ms. Badger will serve as the ambassador for the 2017 See It Be It program. The festival has also named more female jury presidents, and more female judges in general, over the past few years.

Unlike the official Cannes rules, such as rule No. 3b, which says Ascential has the right to refuse entries that “offend national sentiments, religious sentiments or public taste,” the criteria around gender bias and objectification will serve more as a “guideline,” said Mr. Thomas. The criteria, he said, could possibly become a rule in the future, but he’s hoping a more mindful industry will make that unnecessary.

Traditionally, each jury must sign off on every piece of work that is short-listed for the Lion in which they are responsible, essentially publishing the short lists in their names. With the new criteria in place, they will now also have to affirm that they believe the work does not objectify women or perpetuate gender bias.

Badger & Winters President Jim Winters said that by implementing the criteria, Cannes “sends a very powerful message to the chief creative officer of every agency that they will need to be stringent in terms of what meets their standards, not only in terms of what they submit, but ultimately it will make them more conscious and thoughtful about any work they do in their agency.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” said David Lubars, chairman and chief creative officer of BBDO North America. Mr. Lubars has chaired three Cannes juries in 10 years: Titanium in 2006, Film & Press in 2009 and Branded Content and Entertainment in 2015. “Every jury I’ve headed killed ads like that. No one wants to award work with mean undertones. And agencies shouldn’t do things like that.”

There might be blurred lines in certain areas, like fashion, where nudity is a factor, Mr. Lubars said. But he said people, including Cannes jurors, are for the most part decent rather than mean-spirited. “It’s good to have a heightened awareness of things,” he said.

Over the last year, “#WomenNotObjects” and its hard-hitting videos have caught the eyes of media outlets, awards shows, conferences and celebrities like actor Ashton Kutcher, singer Alanis Morissette and George Takei, known for his role on “Star Trek,” who posted about the campaign on social media. The initiative is planning to release another video in a few months, said Ms. Badger.

Ms. Badger, who began “#WomenNotObjects” partly to honor her three daughters, who died along with her parents in a 2011 house fire, said she believes that ending objectification in ads will also lead to more women getting into creative roles and leadership positions.

“#WomenNotObjects” has helped Badger & Winters reshape itself as an agency and focus on assisting clients across all industry categories to connect with women in genuine ways, said Mr. Winters. Some of its project-based creative consulting includes work for MetLife, Starboard Cruise and Peloton.

As for Ms. Badger, she said she plans to speak about the campaign at corporate offices and events throughout the year, such as Google, the Women in the World Summit, the 3% Conference and, of course, Cannes.

In June, for the 2017 Cannes Festival of Creativity, Ms. Badger will speak on a panel about gender, diversity and objectification of women with Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard.

Mr. Thomas said the request for speakers to discuss issues around gender this year at Cannes has been “huge,” which makes the new criteria in the jury briefings even more relevant.

“The reason it’s important for Cannes to include is because it’s important to the industry,” he said. “We don’t necessarily try to lead the industry, but we try to reflect it because Cannes is the industry’s event.”

13533: BHM 2017—AT&T.

Not sure when AT&T launched The Bridge, but that’s where the telecommunications company dumped its annual 28 Days BHM promotional content.

It’s Icons&Legends&Innovators&You&Clichés.

13532: Diverted Diversity @ 22squared.

AgencySpy posted on the diverted diversity developments at 22squared, where additional White women boosted the agency figures to 68 percent female overall, 47 percent female in the creative department, 80 percent female at the SVP level and 29 percent female in the executive leadership category. This place will require The 3% Conference to change its outdated and inaccurate name. However, a peek at the 22squared team shows the racial and ethnic diversity percentage to be less than 2 squared.

13531: BHM 2017—NMAAHC.

During Black History Month, visit and support the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture.

13530: BHM 2017—Ashro.

Here’s a Black History Month celebration that’s, well, Ashrocentric.

13529: Super Bowl LIes.

The New York Times published a “live briefing” titled: Super Bowl Commercials: Immigration and Diversity Show Up in Some Ads. TBWA\Chiat\Day New York CEO Rob Schwartz declared, “If there’s anything that’s screaming out here, it’s diversity.” Um, it’s technically faux diversity—with a mix of diverted diversity—given that the majority of Super Bowl commercials were created by the majority of Madison Avenue. That is, White men and White women continue to dominate the advertising field, as well as the football field, in regards to the spots running during the NFL championship game. Wonder how Colin Kaepernick would respond to the discriminatory exclusivity.

13528: BHM 2017—MSI.

The Museum of Science + Industry in Chicago salutes Black History Month with the Black Creativity Innovation Studio and Black Creativity Juried Art Exhibition. Hey, Blacks have a better chance of becoming scientists and artists versus advertising professionals.

13527: BHM 2017—Twitter.

From Adweek…

Chat About Black History Month With Twitter Blackbirds

Users who send direct messages to @Blackbirds will receive responses in one of four categories

By David Cohen

Twitter’s Blackbirds resource group for African-American employees launched a chat bot for Black History Month.

Users who send direct messages to @Blackbirds will receive responses in one of four categories:

• #BlackHistory: Something that happened on this day in Black History Month.

• #ForTheCause: Community events in select cities.

• #SelfCare: Tips on how users can take care of themselves.

• #ForTheCulture: Notable moments and content from prominent African-American Twitter users.

Answers from the chat bot appear to be prepopulated.

Twitter users: Are you doing anything to mark Black History Month?

13526: BHM 2017—Google.

Google celebrates Black History Month by saluting sculptor Edmonia Lewis with a standard doodle. Meanwhile, Google infographics show minimal chipping away at the representation and hiring of Blacks.

13525: BHM 2017—Da Man.

Okay, this technically not a BHM advertisement, but it’s always great to salute the hardest-working man in Black advertising—as well as note how Publicis leadership lacks diversity.