Adweek presented From the Archives: A Vintage Photo Tour of Agencies—a collection of Madison Avenue images from the 1950s through 1970s. Noticeably absent are any minorities. In fact, the shot above from Grey Advertising shows that a damn dog was more welcome in advertising agencies than people of color.
That still goes for today, most GM agencies would rather having dogs roam their hallways then african americans. It all starts with culture, these agencies are too entrenched , too united and too organized in at the HR,Execs and even the CDs level to allow for diversity. Its just the way things are. When things look really bad then they call up a minority firms and minority recruiting agencies for a token candidate . Many HRs have a list in ominicom, interpublic and WPP of token African American candidates who they use. Also a lot of it is client driven. Many clients do not want their business going to minority agencies and choose to work with agencies that are monochromatic in nature. Clients also pull accounts from GM agencies who they deem too ethnic in makeup. There have been examples of where agencies will fly a team of british speaking ECDs to offices just to win accounts. We still live in a very racist world, I guarantee u if u took a tour of most major agencies these old images will look exactly the same, just with a more hipster upgrade.
ReplyDelete