EQUALITY MEDIA Newsletter ::: ADVERTISING AGE Launches Diversity Blogs (An Industry First)

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Wednesday, August 29, 2007
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On the Issues...
ADVERTISING AGE Launches Diversity Blogs
(An Industry First)
Cross-sectional cast of contributors;
Correcting AAAA's "Diversity" Error

The advertising industry rarely benefits from “first-mover advantage.” By the time a new technology, viral sensation, or trend makes it to the C-suite…well, it usually isn’t any of those things anymore.

The next step is to enter “the Big Time,” graduating from the underground into vogue (and maybe even Vogue).

If that’s true, then diversity—with all its many colors, shapes, sizes, and plights—has arrived. This week, Advertising Age launched a new blog series dedicated to diversity of all kinds, from race to age to disability, in a section called “The Big Tent.”

Asked where he got the name for the section, Advertising Age Blogs and Features Editor Ken Wheaton wrote (on the blog, of course): “The ‘big tent’ refers to a party in which diverse viewpoints are accepted, where the comfort of a unified ideology is exchanged for the clamor of many voices. While political scientists and historians might argue that the big tent has its limits when it comes to winning elections, it's a necessity in industries that hope to reach out to all Americans.”

The most significant risk involved in producing any editorial series about diversity is, of course, that someone, somewhere is going to be left out of the mix. It’s a rightful concern, but one that Advertising Age attempts to ford by recruiting an eclectic mix of contributors, from a variety of racial, ethnic, religious, and industrial backgrounds.

[Full disclosure: I have been chosen as a weekly blogger for the site, primarily tasked with representing the disabled community, as well as writing in vehement promotion of GLBT and marriage equality, as each pertains to marketing and commerce. My pieces publish on Thursdays.]

As blogger Karl Carter, co-CEO of experiential marketing and promotions firm GTM (Atlanta) said, “the weight of the multicultural industry to a degree is on us. We have a responsibility to write from the heart & address what often doesn't get addressed in our industry.”

Of course, the benefits stand to stretch far beyond the business community. As Carter continued, “They [at Advertising Age] have opened Pandora's box now that industry has to seriously address diversity, and it can't ever be shut again. Our job, as I see it, is to keep the lid open and open a lot of eyes and minds.”

One would be hard-pressed to find anyone who discourages a robust discussion of diversity in media and related industries. After all, what downside is there (unless one is a bigot)? A greater cacophony of voices likely leads to creative new ideas. And ideas—as the advertising community saw recently in the Dell agency pitch fiasco [paid access] —are a premium currency during moments of innovation and technological flux.

But not everyone seems to agree that a lack of diversity warrants a fix. Arnold Worldwide executive Tiffany Warren, my fellow blogger for Advertising Age, recently pointed to “Wall Street Journal editorial page deputy editor Daniel Henninger[‘s] declar[ation] that diversity is dead.” I don’t know the man personally, but I can’t imagine a fool who takes words lightly would have risen to so high a post at so venerable a paper.

More specifically, there remain disagreements about the nature of the necessary changes, how dramatic and how quickly to undertake them—where to begin. A reasonable expectation might call upon market forces to dictate diversity’s priorities, focusing first on the most easily incorporated groups (say, for example, the GLBT community) that really just require a change in perspective and movement toward tolerance. Soon thereafter, the floodgates to all-inclusiveness will thrust open on their own.

Unfortunately for us all, such an assumption would be wrong, and utterly neglectful of the intellectual inertia that constantly befalls all the industries that this newsletter targets (media, advertising, public relations, entertainment, corporate).

Instead of making real progress, each industry finds itself playing catch-up, calling for another three-day complaint session (read: “conference”) and some rounds of golf.

Consider the American Association of Advertising Agencies’s (AAAA) 2007 Media conference, held last winter in Las Vegas, which held a “novel” panel on diversity. MediaPost’s Wayne Friedman pointed out that “so obvious was the mass exit that a question for the panel came up in its regard — wondering how improvements could be made in the area of diversity if few people cared enough to hang around for discussion.”

What I pointed out to Friedman (who referenced me in the third paragraph of his blog) was that disregard for the AAAA’s “Diversity” panel was rampant perhaps—at least in part—because the panel itself was a sham. It featured three black men and a Hispanic woman.

I don’t care what color your skin is, or your religion, or your politics. That was NOT diversity, no matter how you define it. That was a TOKEN panel—nothign more—thrown together as an afterthought to check the political correctness box on someone’s mental roster.

Shaunice Hawkins, VP of Diversity and Multicultural Initiatives for the Magazine Publishers of America, is a case study of activism and passion melded seamlessly with the finesse at negotiating egos needed to make (and keep) friends in high places. She is a friend and trusted colleague.

But over many lunchtime debates I’ve learned that Hawkins’s strategy seeks gradual, evolutionary movement toward lofty, admirable diversity goals. Her method has benefit of being relatively pain-free for the companies concerned. The one attribute it lacks in spades, unfortunately, is ambition to force companies to bend or break the status quo.

Blogger Warren indicated that time is of the essence, lest “diversity” decline from collective objective to passé social trend. To avoid that fate, I—for one—will always prefer paradigm shifts that are stark, definite. Remember gym class? Pain brings gain, and confirms that change is meaningful and permanent, rather than mere appeasement.

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