The Big Tent

Association of Black-Owned Advertising Agencies Challenges ANA

An Open Letter to the Association of National Advertisers

Posted by Eugene Morris and Howard Buford on 02.05.09 @ 03:18 PM

[Editor's note: What follows is an open letter from the Association of Black-Owned Advertising Agencies to the Association of National Advertisers.]

The Association of Black-Owned Advertising Agencies (ABAA) is requesting a meeting with senior leadership of the ANA in order to open a substantive dialogue about how to bring Black-owned agencies into the mainstream.

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The Evolution of Targeting the Black Audience: Part 2

How to Ensure Black Agencies' Survival

Posted by Eugene Morris on 10.02.07 @ 04:56 PM

Eugene Morris

My last post talked about the evolution of target marketing and the African-American advertising agency. This time I want to focus on where these agencies are today and what needs to happen if we want to remain viable. There are naysayers who have already written off Black agencies as dinosaurs that will soon be extinct. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the news of our death has been seriously exaggerated.

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The Evolution of Targeting the Black Audience

And a Brief History of the African-American Advertising Agency

Posted by Eugene Morris on 09.11.07 @ 05:04 PM

Eugene Morris

It will probably surprise most people to learn that targeting "Negroes" -- as we were once called -- actually started in 1940. An officer of the Los Angeles Urban League wrote a Business Week article titled "Advice on the Negro," which was a list of dos and don'ts for those who were seeking to do business with Black consumers. The dos included recognition of Blacks as good consumers who wanted many of the same things as their White counterparts.

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