Another holding company is pledging to help clients steer more dollars to Black-owned and other diverse media companies. Dentsu—whose media agencies include Carat, iProspect, Dentsu X and 360i—today unveiled a new initiative called Economic Empowerment that includes consulting services aimed at driving systematic change in how brands make media-buying decisions.
As part of the program, Dentsu says it will maintain a repository of all minority-owned partners and encourage clients to reveal publicly how much they are spending with them. “At the end of the day we work for our clients and so they need to agree to that level of transparency,” says Doug Rozen, CEO of Dentsu Media Americas. But “we are suggesting they should.”
General Motors, which uses Carat for media, is one of the first clients to use the offering, according to Dentsu. The automaker in April promised to increase advertising spending on Black-owned media to 4% by 2022 and 8% by 2025—up from 2% in 2021. The commitment came after a public pressure campaign led by several Black media owners.
Dentsu’s other media clients include Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Mastercard, Pfizer and Kroger.
Black-owned media companies represent less than 2% of total spend in 2020, according to Nielsen Ad Intel, while Black consumers represent 13% of the population.