Dear Madison Avenue
It’s time for some introspection
Originally published June 3, 2020
No one can deny that we are going through a moment in history. This is particularly true for black people; we are in pain and we are tired of being in pain. For black people who work in ‘professional’ spaces this is doubly so because those spaces are markedly dominated by white people — particularly white men.
This is also true of Madison Avenue, though public perception would have the world believe something else. Our industry, our agencies, are often thought of as the ‘original’ startup environment; a place bristling with diverse life like an undiscovered planet. The reality is, however, that the spaces are dominated by white people — particularly white men.
The industry has benefited from the perception of wholesale inclusivity and diversity; it has been shielded from much (if not all) of the kind of critical scrutiny we mete out to the entertainment, media, banking and tech industries, for example. That we rarely interrogate this multi-billion dollar industry and the way it replicates inequalities and inequities of our society is problematic, but the way we have ignored the need for increased diversity is outright negligent.
You can plug and play ‘diversity’ for any minority group you want and the argument still holds, but today I am talking exclusively about black people and why it is so hard for Madison Avenue to participate in the #BlackLivesMatterconversation with any authenticity. Let us consider some of the largest holding companies. Most of the marketing communications products in the world — from strategy to campaigns — come from somewhere within these four groups.
WPP has one black person in its 19-member executive group; its 14-member board is completely white.
Omnicom’s 14-member leadership group has one black person; three black people sit on its 11-member corporate governance board.
IPG has no black people in its six member executive officer group; one black person sits on its nine member board.
Publicis Groupe has one black person on its 21-member management committee; its 13-member Supervisory Board and its four member Management Board are all white.
This trend repeats at every level of the industry whether you work at a holding company shop or an independent outfit . Unless you work at a “cultural agency” that specializes in “urban marketing” (we will talk about that another time) it is more than likely that the person who sits next to you at work is white. And the person next to that person. And the person behind you. And the person in front of you.
But for some reason we do not talk openly about this reality. Instead we extol our open office spaces and unlimited vacation time. We talk about pool tables and happy hours and staff parties and Cannes. We see stories of rampant discrimination all around in other industries and say ‘damn; couldn’t be me’, and go on to complete our yearly diversity and inclusion trainings.
This self-fed delusion is why Madison Avenue is finding it hard to communicate with Americans — particularly Black Americans — right now. Whether on its own behalf or on behalf of its clients, in this moment, agencies are struggling to find words at a time when words mean everything.
That is because this moment is not a brief; it is a lived experience. There’s no new customer insight; we have been talking about this for 400 years. There is no persona, no customer journey to create; this is not about a person — it is about a whole people.
There are, simply put, not enough black voices in the room. It is the reason we are seeing the same, generic, pacifying, empty message of ‘solidarity’ from most brands talking about the scourge of racism in this country right now. Agencies do not know what to say or how to say it. There is no finger on the pulse because there are not enough black creatives and black strategists on your team. There are not enough black account managers and black producers on your team. There are not enough black people on the client side. And, I am (not) sorry to say, you do not have authentic relationships with the few that are on your team now. The truth is that we are very rarely our authentic selves at work.
In professional spaces black people perform a version of themselves that is carefully rehearsed. We actively police ourselves; constantly managing tone, diction, posture, word choice, gesticulation. We are constantly rounding our shoulders and speaking softer than everyone in the room. Everything so that we don’t get called ‘angry’ or ‘moody’ or ‘lazy’. So that someone doesn’t say we are difficult to work with. So that we are actively othered in the space where we have to make a living. We, metaphorically, take a knee every time we clock in.
The black people you know in advertising — as my friend and restorative justice and equity educator Teneile Warren said about being black in professional spaces — “survive the job by not bringing [their] whole self to work. [She/He] performs an acceptable proximity to whiteness which generally includes the weathering of daily microaggressions in the workplace”.
We undergo microaggressions and the questions about fried chicken and whether or not our hair can be touched. For the record the answer is always no ( you are absolutely not allowed to put your hands in my hair).
We bask in the passive aggressiveness meted out daily by others that we know we would be (and are) instantly reprimanded for; we’ve all been told to ‘calm down’ or ‘it’s not that serious’ or ‘that’s just how they are’ by a teammate or a superior when responding to some outright rudeness from another colleague.
We note the silence of our colleagues at times like this and remind ourselves that the office is a space for memes and TV shows and political topics that white people deem palatable — our lives not being one of them. We watch white people who have mastered mediocrity constantly get away with doing the bare minimum while we have to work twice as hard for half the recognition.We tell ourselves that we are ‘professionals’ and we press on, outnumbered, to do it another day.
We note that our industry is silent, that it is without any meaningful words. It is not sustainable and the time to start changing is now.
Check your team, see how many black people are around you. Particularly at the management/leadership level. Ask yourself how many of us are you interacting with on a daily basis. How many of us are meaningful parts of the agency? How many black people are on the client side? How are you supporting or listening to your black teammates at this time?
Now is the moment to realize that diversity and inclusion cannot continue to be a once a year training; it has to become a part of the lived experience for advertising agencies. It has to be actively developed and nurtured as part of a new normal. It’s time to acknowledge that diversity is a problem not just in the ads we see, but in the companies that make and traffic them as well.
Until we have this kind of serious introspection as an industry, the voice you hear will always be generic. There will always be gaffes. The industry will never be able to really read the room. Until we actively, and I mean actively, recruit, welcome, support and sustain diverse talent the industry will not change and it will continue to be ill-equipped to talk about #BlackLivesMatter — or any other issue about diversity.
And black people will never be able to be their authentic selves at work.
