Just wanted to post a quick addendum to the Illinois State Lottery scenario, as it also connects to an earlier perspective on the shaky state of affairs for Black advertising agencies.
In January, R.J. Dale Advertising lost the lottery account, and the Black-owned shop is probably destroyed by the event. Its remaining client duties include minority work for a local grocery chain and assorted projects for a handful of brands.
Burrell Communications picked up a special contract with the lottery estimated at $6.4 million. The shop participated in a shootout involving three other minority firms, although the pitch was held months after Energy BBDO won the lion’s share of billings. So Burrell will likely have little say in the overall campaign direction, ultimately relegated to producing Black versions of the mass-market campaign.
This illustrates another challenge for minority shops. These days, it seems like the non-White enterprises find themselves in various positions of powerlessness when competing for accounts:
1. If tied to a network, the minority shop will “team up” with its White sibling—although it’s actually closer to a master-servant relationship. You can guess who assumes the servant role.
2. If no network is involved, but the client wants integrated marketing, minority shops will “team up” with White strangers—and find themselves in a different master-servant dynamic that Alberto J. Ferrer described as the Frenemy Era.
3. If the client wants integrated marketing and the White agency cannot find a suitable partner-servant, the White agency has the option of inventing a minority shop.
4. If the client feels like it, they can hire a minority shop after selecting a White AOR, as the Illinois State Lottery did. This common practice displays disrespect for multicultural marketing. The minorities are after-thoughts, hauled in to assimilate via the segregated smokescreen of synergy.
5. If the client feels like it, they can let the White agency handle the jobs traditionally awarded to a minority shop.
And that’s how the minority advertising game is played, folks.
2 comments:
I wonder if the minority shops can petition the client armed with the actual numbers of minority revenue and change this status quo.
For all of Dan Weiden's huffin' + puffin' about summer camps, funny how he overlooked such examples of bigotry as this. (He should've read KNOCK THE HUSTLE—ha!)
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