7244: ANA Masters Of Cluelessness.

Wanted to briefly comment again on the ANA 2009 Masters of Marketing conference held last weekend in Phoenix. At The Big Tent, conference attendee Rochelle Newman-Carrasco posted a perspective on the event, focusing her remarks on the speech delivered by Mickey D’s CMO Neil Golden. Worth highlighting is the excerpt below from Newman-Carrasco:

In fact, a polling question fielded by [Bob] Liodice following the morning’s presentations asked the audience to choose where their organization was in terms of multicultural marketing commitments and the use of specialized agency partners. The majority of the audience responded that they had not engaged any specialists of this nature.

This revelation goes to the heart of the advertising industry’s diversity issue. It seems fair to make the following overreacting presumptions:

• Most advertisers are culturally clueless. This wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t also partnering with White advertising agencies whose exclusivity and ignorance makes it highly likely that irrelevant images, idiotic stereotypes and insensitive messaging will ensue.

• If advertisers are not engaging minority firms, it begs the question, “Are advertisers engaging minorities with their brands at all?” Perhaps advertisers recognize what Dan Wieden admitted: “… like it or not, in this business I essentially hire a bunch of White, middle-class kids, pay them enormous, enormous sums of money to do what? To create messages to the inner-city kids who create the culture the White kids are trying like hell to emulate. But if you go into the inner city, odds are these kids aren’t even going to see advertising as a possibility, as an opportunity for them. Now that’s fucked up.” It appears that advertisers are essentially mirroring Wieden’s actions by hiring White agencies to create messages to minority audiences. Now that’s fucked up.

• It seems like Liodice missed a golden opportunity to ask his peers to join The Army.