Essay 1246

Initial comments responding to the latest Marc Brownstein perspective presented in Essay 1245…

> Brandon makes a very good point. I also find it almost insulting when these “white guys” who need a dose of culture turn to Jay Z as their man to get them into the Black community. See the new Budweiser Select campaign, he gets to be co-brand director while guys like Brandon who work their butts off get the cold shoulder… just not cool. — New York, NY

> If you need a person of color (and a 4A MAIP alum) to guest speak in NJ, you know where to reach me. Heck, I might even go down to Philly to help out. — Branchburg, NJ

> What you’re doing is great and all, but I, as a black male, can say you’re still partially missing the mark. The typical, and utterly wrong response to doing something about diversity is to do something for the underprivileged. Not all inner-city dwellers are minorities, and not all minorities are inner-city dwellers. I have a B.S. in Communications from Northwestern University, one of the best schools in the nation, and there are other qualified candidates such as myself who do not come from the ghetto and still experience the negative effects of the lack of diversity in advertising. Your gut is telling you the wrong thing — instead of telling you to find some charity cases, it should be telling you to attempt to highlight what is intrinsically wrong with advertising agency culture and put an end to it. Giving an internship to an underprivileged high school student does not help the industry (beyond possibly making you feel better); but seeking out highly qualified minorities and awarding them jobs will. They attend the same schools white America attends. They get jobs comparable to their white counterparts in other industries. Other industries do not seem to have as much of a problem finding them. However, advertising, an industry that is supposed to be about groundbreaking ideas, looks to hire clones of its current employees. It is assumed that the only people who will understand the beer commercial with the average guy as hero is an average white guy. Thus the majority of those who work on these accounts are — you guessed it — average white guys. (Being from Chicago, home of Budweiser, Miller and Coors’ ad agencies, I can assure you that this is true.) Who understands the average woman’s hygiene issues? The average white women. This type of Neanderthal thinking runs rampant in general market agencies. It is assumed that minorities are somehow foreign and a separate agency is needed to cater to them; thus minorities get funneled over to the minority agencies and are not considered a good “fit” for the general market.

This problem not only affects diversity in advertising, but also advertising in general — which is probably why the industry in general attracts less people than it used to. Commercials suck. Why? Because you have a bunch of average white guys sitting in a room trying to figure out what’s cool to a diverse, socially conscious generation of 20somethings. That is the part that needs to be changed; and while doling out presents to inner-city charity cases is nice, it does not get to the root of the advertising diversity issue. — Chicago, IL