Next up on Ms. Wilson's list: content creation.
During New York's Advertising Week in September, Ms. Wilson
plans to launch DivergeNow.com, a site dedicated to multicultural
campaigns and people working in the industry or those who are
champions of diversity.
"We talk about diversity all day long and it's woven through
general trades and there are diversity publications and trade
publications, but there's not one platform that speaks to the
multicultural work and industry we're in," she said. ColorComm Inc.
will own the site, but it will be a standalone business with a team
of writers, editors and content creators.
And though a little further off—it's part of her
three-year plan—Ms. Wilson said she hopes to create a
community just for multicultural men. When she first brought up the
idea, men told her there are not enough of them to fill an
organization, but she said she thought the same at the first
ColorComm luncheon.
Despite its growth, ColorComm has networking at heart. And that
goes for the conference, too.
Ms. Wilson said she was sick of conferences where speakers flee
the stage immediately after their sessions and can't be found after
or say they don't have business cards on them.
"What I love about the conference is that it's purposely put
together to be smaller and have an intimate environment," said Aixa
Velez, director of global internal communications at Cushman &
Wakefield and executive director ColorComm's Chicago chapter. "You
have no idea at a dinner that someone next to you can be an
executive VP of communications for a Fortune 500 company, because
they're enjoying the conference and participating just like you
are."
At the most recent conference, two of the college students
volunteering were approached by agencies and companies and wound up
getting internships—one at Edelman in Chicago and the other for the NBC
page program.
Lisa Ross, managing director of APCO Worldwide's Washington
office, who joined ColorComm this year, launched an agency task
force during her speech at the conference. "I threw away my script
and said, 'We have a problem and we have to address it,'" said Ms.
Ross.
The task force will focus on the barriers that prevent women,
particularly those of color, from advancing on the account side of
communications firms. So far, Ms. Ross said she has met with Barri
Rafferty, worldwide president of Ketchum, about the initiative, and she has a
series of conversations lined up with other agencies.
Ms. Ross said the conference, which offered a "comfortable, safe
place to converse, share concerns, talk best practices and exchange
business cards," was not made up of only female attendees. "I
expected to see men there and I wanted to see men there," she said.
"This isn't an 'us against them' proposition. When you're
inclusive, you become diverse."
"Profound" is the word Mr. Thomas of the Cannes Lions used to
describe his experience at the conference. "On a personal level, as
a white male in media, it was a life-changing opportunity to
experience, to a small degree and for a brief moment, what
minorities in the communications industry face every day," he said.
"Our industry is at a critical point and we must face the diversity
issue and actively address the extensive and far-reaching
challenges it evokes."
Stuart Smith, global CEO of Ogilvy PR, attended the most recent
ColorComm conference for the first time and said he wanted to
better educate himself on diversity issues in the U.S. and hear
them firsthand. Diversity "means a lot of different things to
different people in different markets," said Mr. Smith, who moved
from London to New York a little over a year ago.
"The industry is coming to the point where there has to be real
change and we as an industry have to make not incremental but
significant progress every year on this issue. And as a CEO, I want
to be held accountable by my people for the words I'm saying," he
added.
The agency also rented a suite at the conference to interview
attendees for potential jobs, and Mr. Smith said Ogilvy PR is close
to bringing on one of the people they talked to.
Ms. Wilson said she couldn't be mad that Ogilvy was interviewing
people while conference programming was going on, because the
agency's actions were purposeful and positive. "I'm proud of the
people we're impacting and lives we're changing," she said.