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Ad Agencies, ‘Last Corporate Bastion of Jim Crow’

Written on
January 9th 2009
Author
by Edward Barrera  |
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ftc_lead_generation_small.jpgADOTAS — Any time I hear lawyers cry about workplace discrimination, my first, cynical, reaction is to wonder whose pocket is about to be picked.

And apparently, this time, it could be some major advertising agencies such as Interpublic, Omnicom Group and WPP, among others. They are being scrutinized, according to lawyers and activists, including from the NAACP, for “decades of systemic and pervasive bias against agency employees and would-be employees who are black, which they said makes the ad business far more unfair than most other major American industries.”

They released a 104-page study, the Research Perspectives on Race and Employment in the Advertising Industry, that concludes that “the divergence between racial equality in this industry and the rest of the labor market is more than twice as large today as 30 years ago.”

Some of the lowlights:

- Black college graduates working in advertising earn $.80 for every dollar earned by their equally-qualified white counterparts. This racial pay gap is more than twice as large in advertising as in the overall labor market.

- Data from the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission estimates the expected representation of African Americans at 9.6% of advertising managers and professionals. The current 5.3% representation reaches only 55% of that benchmark. Eliminating this shortfall would require hiring or promoting 7,200 additional black advertising professionals and managers.

- About 16% of large establishments in the industry employ no black managers or professionals, a rate 60% higher than in the overall labor market.which concluded that only 5.3 percent of managers and professionals at agencies in 2008 were black.

Sanford Moore, an activist, talk-show host and former employee of BBDO told the Times that “it is time for the last corporate bastion of Jim Crow to fall.”

– Express your opinion, comment below.



Reader Comments.

when will the world and employers stop looking at the color of a persons skin, and purely look at their qualifications. People are not in control of what race or nationality they are born in to, but are in control of how hard they work, how eager they are to learn more, and how they conduct our selves in the professional arena.

Posted by lisa ann | 2:01 pm on January 9, 2009.

Wow lisa ann, that’s the same excuse racists have been using for years to keep blacks from fairly obtaining jobs. If you don’t get the difference you are part of the problem. Blacks can’t hide their skin color and so have been more discriminated against than most other races in education and jobs. Believe me I know plenty of intelligent, very hard working blacks that have been passed over for “some reason” yet they were very highly qualified. it happens every day! Many very light skinned blacks have succeeded in the corporate world because they passed for white. Even in countries with majority black populations, the darker your skin the less you succeed. So, like it or not, you must look at skin color and stop pretending that it is not a factor in job success until someday we rise above stealthy race discrimination.

Posted by Alex | 6:20 pm on January 9, 2009.

VIDEO: Cyrus Mehri’s Statement
> NEW YORK (YouTube.com/AdAge) — The issue of the advertising industry’s diversity hiring practices, which seemed to have settled down, flared anew Thursday. Attorney Cyrus Mehri orchestrated a dramatic press conference and the release of new study documenting racial disparity throughout the ad agency business.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJDD0kERpdc

Posted by Hoag Levins | 11:08 am on January 10, 2009.

Does anybody know if the pool of candidates is available for the job qualifications? If college graduation rates are lower then they should be, perhaps there just aren’t the candidates yet?

Posted by Claire | 1:58 am on January 11, 2009.

I used to work in advertising on the West coast. There were virtually no Blacks in the creative departments anywhere. I knew of just three.

I asked a Black copywriter how come there were so few Blacks in the business. He said that he didn’t know. I asked another the same question. He said, “It’s just off the radar.” Neither one mentioned racism.

I once got a call from a big agency asking me if I knew any black creative people (writers and art directors). They wanted to hire one. I mentioned the ones I knew. They both been approached by the agency but neither one wanted a full-time job. (They were both successful freelancers.)

Don’t know what happens on the account side, but from my experience, being a Black creative person would be an advantage.

Posted by Andy | 8:28 am on January 11, 2009.

Cyrus Mehri is on the board of advisors of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a front group for the mullah’s lobby in Washington:

english.iranianlobby.com

Posted by Peter Verkooijen | 10:07 pm on January 12, 2009.

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