Opinion: Agencies say Black Lives Matter. But only a shock to the system will drive real change

In 2010, I researched Black underrepresentation inside New York City advertising agencies by interviewing 11 diversity officers and HR practitioners, running 15 focus groups with interns from 19 different agencies, and conducting participant observation at McCann, Publicis, and Deutsch. I found that, despite many years of internal reform efforts ranging from diversity scholarships to awards shows, the white and well-connected continued to dominate the industry and leadership roles through racially segregated social networks and referral hires. And, even when Black applicants did manage to break in, they were saddled with the added burdens of code switching, stereotype threat, and multiple barriers to advancement including tokenism, affirmative action backlash, increased surveillance, and other microaggressions. The ad industry wasn’t changing, it was stalling. Ten years later, over 600 Black advertising professionals got tired of waiting. Citing decades of good intentions with little progress, 600&Rising endorsed an open letter calling for, among other demands, increased Black staffing and leadership, inclusion audits of workplace culture, wage equity, and public reporting of diversity data. Many responded including Interpublic Group of Cos. and 30 other agencies, by publicly releasing heretofore internal employment make-up stats and promising to do better. Seizing the momentum, 600&Rising formed a non-profit with the 4A’s to set agency diversity data reporting standards and compliance timetables. But who will enforce them? The book "Madison Avenue and the Color Line" by Jason Chambers, recounts how the U.S. advertising industry continuously excluded African Americans from the creative process while depicting them in stereotypical ways—if at all—until the 1960’s when civil rights groups, government agencies, and black consumers began pressuring large clients, like Lever Brothers, to step in. Advertiser oversight worked and helped usher in a “Golden Age” of Black creativity and agency ownership up until the 1970’s recession. Today, that same strategy is still the most effective. According to Diego Scotti, chief marketing officer at Verizon, CMOs “have the power to ask your agencies to see their diversity numbers and hold them accountable.” And, by endorsing the ANA/AIMM Commitment to Equality, Inclusion, and Systemic Change, large advertisers like P&G, Google, and GM are now following Scotti’s lead by declaring their long-term intent to do “everything in our individual and collective power to end systemic racism” including using their “resources and voices as a force for good” to help ensure “an equitable creative supply chain.” So, the clients are en route. And the recession is picking up speed. What to do?

Opinion: Agencies say Black Lives Matter. But only a shock to the system will drive real change

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