A MultiCultClassics visitor pointed to a Digiday essay titled, “2016 Year in Preview: Holding companies make diversity their business.” The Digiday dummies are clearly gazing into a defective crystal ball, given the nonsense of their predictions. That the essay spotlights Brad Jakeman and Kat Gordon as leading advocates in the faux revolution only underscores the sad state of affairs. Digiday also underscored its own lack of credibility by misspelling the name of IPG Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer Heide—not Hilde—Gardner. Hell, the illustration for the essay (depicted above) highlights a key dilemma; that is, diversity has come to mean promoting White women. If holding companies are indeed making diversity their business, it’s only by turning the issue into an advertising campaign exercise, executing deliberately deceptive messages, glittering generalities and outright lies.
OMG everything that's wrong with the whole "diversity in advertising" thing this year, that has shifted to mean only white women rah rah rah, is summed up in that illustration.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder, Digiday :/
Why can't anyone, any single writer, just DEMAND THE DAMN NUMBERS from the holding companies and then not take them at face value but DIG DEEPER?
ReplyDeleteWe're talking about 200,000 people minimum making a living off of advertising, where black people are wholesale locked out entirely unless they're checking IDs at the security desk, making coffee or pushing the broom.
Then we gotta hear bullshit like "Our agency supports AdColor!" or "Our talent base is 28% diverse," and not a single person calls them out.
"Our agency supports AdColor" is code for "We fund the board members hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and they give us diversity awards in exchange, that keep us from having to show any actual numbers."
“Our talent base is 28% diverse!” = our agency also counts overseas employees as diverse to increase our numbers, but since we never have to show any hard numbers, no one will ever call us out on this.
C'mon Digiday, or someone, DIG. D-I-G.