The $330 billion U.S. advertising industry puts black shoppers and their $1.6 trillion in purchasing power at risk.
MeIn June 2020, just weeks after a white police officer killed an unarmed George Floyd, AdAge obtained an internal memo from top five advertising agency Interpublic Group. This indicated that only 2.6% of his executives were black and 86% were white. Chairman and CEO Michael Roth didn’t need to be publicly embarrassed. According to AdAge, Roth wrote in the memo:
Since then, the marketing departments of advertising companies and consumer products companies have aggressively pushed for executive representation. But the industry is stepping back in another fundamental way. Non-Hispanic whites make up 59% of him in the U.S. population, but 72.5% of him in television and digital video advertising in 2022, according to research by global marketing logistics firm Extreme Reach. occupied by white actors. This marks an increase for the white actor from his 65.6% in 2021.
“I think there was a lot of acting because people felt they had to act.”
Shannon Washington, U.S. chief creative officer at R/GA, a subsidiary of Interpublic Group, said the study showed that since the fateful spring of 2020, many marketing departments’ results have been consistent with industry rhetoric about diversity. I said it shows that it doesn’t match.
“I think there was a lot of action because people felt they had to act,” Washington said. forbesThis year, she became the first black female chief creative officer at the holding company of one of five major advertising agencies. She said, “There were a lot of things I like to call pushing paper from one side of the table to the other and making it work. What’s true and what’s not.”
Decision makers in the $330 billion US advertising industry are shorting at-risk black Americans. Don’t just do the right thing. According to a report by international consulting firm McKinsey, the purchasing power of black people will reach $1.6 trillion in 2021, and black consumers are younger than other groups and have higher brand awareness. increase. Consumer attitudes are also trending towards social activism, with 77% of Gen Z shoppers saying a company’s value is an important part of their purchasing decisions, according to a Deloitte survey.
Shannon Washington, U.S. Chief Creative Officer, Interpublic Group subsidiary R/GA
Margarita Corporan
At the same time, a study by the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing found that 60% of consumers across communities said they felt “invisible or underrepresented” in advertising last year, and by 2021 , up from 58% of The poll also found that the top-ranked companies on the Diversity Index had the most sales boost from advertising.
The disconnect could endanger companies that don’t prioritize diversity in their marketing, said Miles Worthington, founder of Los Angeles-based marketing agency WORTHI. Forbes. Worthington said all new generations are “more LGBTQ+, more gender fluid, and more multicultural in composition.
“So really, this job is a business longevity-creating act,” said former Netflix’s Worthington
extreme Reach says it analyzed 1 million ads placed in North America. Between 2019 and October 2022. Tracking his four racial groups: black, white, Asian and Hispanic, each of the three minority groups saw his share of actors shrink in 2022 compared to 2021, and the number of Hispanic actors It was found that the share of half. According to Extreme Reach, there were far more male actors than females in the ads.
Melinda McLaughlin, Chief Marketing Officer, Extreme Reach, said:
Over time, however, decision makers in marketing departments and executives are becoming more diverse. According to the Association of National Advertisers, by 2022, approximately 32.3% of marketing teams at businesses and agencies will be non-white. It is increasing year by year from 27.9% in 2019. For leaders with chief marketing officer equivalent roles, non-white representatives increased from 12% for him to 14.3% for that period.
The Interpublic Group said in its latest workforce data report, the proportion of black workers has increased from 7.2% in 2019 to 9.3% in 2021. For black senior executives or executive-level managers, the percentage increased from 2.6% to 4.7%. To put the numbers into perspective, blacks make up her 10.3% of American college graduates.
Miles Worthington, founder of Los Angeles-based marketing agency WORTHI
Eric Umphrey
Channing Martin, the company’s global chief diversity and social impact officer, said the industry has made progress by increasing the diversity of its marketing teams, but the persistence of stereotypes and the impact of these ads said more work was needed to reduce the traditionally negative portrayals of women and people of color in “Creatives know that increasing black presence on his team is important, but they also need to work on accurate portrayal and reinforcing positive imagery,” he said. “It’s frustrating when the pace of industry progress doesn’t align with stated goals and actions. Data shows that we need to be open to course corrections and ways to have greater impact.” ”
In the midst of its slow progress, it’s easy to forget how advertising firms and their corporate clients embraced Black Lives Matter in 2020. His agency Wieden + Kennedy Portland designed a Nike ad that simply faded in and out of white text on a black background. “Don’t turn your back on racism,” the TV commercial told viewers. Implemented a #StopHateForProfit boycott against Facebook and Instagram due to hate messages allowed. Epic Games has also removed police cars from his popular game Fortnite in protest of law enforcement practices.
Worthington said the advertising industry needs to address not only the quantity of ad diversity, but also the quality. Some brands are trying to squeeze multiple minority groups into ads that appear to tick the boxes instead of placing genuine mainstream ads for specific groups, he said. rice field. He also lamented what he said was the overuse of interracial couples and the underuse of people with dark skin or curly hair.
“It’s great. That’s how a lot of families are,” Worthington said. “But I think there’s fear in showing black love. I think there’s fear in showing Latinx family. I think there’s fear in showing dark-skinned people and their descendants.” think.”
A groundbreaking R/GA executive, Washington said diverse representation on the team is essential to creating diverse ads. So one of her areas of focus is recruiting people from different backgrounds and helping them stay in the industry, even if they don’t stay with her company.
She said the news was chill when industry colleagues pointed out that she was the first black female chief creative officer at a Big Five subsidiary.
“I’m really, really focused on making sure there’s a pipeline and a pathway for another young woman to fill this position,” Washington said. forbes“If I do this right, there’s not a decade between me and another woman of color.”
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