It’s been disturbing to see most White holding companies and White advertising agencies ignore Black History Month—especially in terms of deciding against publishing performative PR or contrived and clichéd campaigns.
Equally disturbing is seeing messages from the few enterprises that did acknowledge the annual event.
AbelsonTaylor Group—a pharmaceutical marketing firm—spotlighted its Black ERG and Black icons from Adland.
Side effects include drowsiness and nausea.
AgencySpy posted on The One Club 2022 Creative Hall of Fame inductees, including Cheryl D. Miller, Janet Kestin, Nancy Vonk and Carol H. Williams. Wonder what Neil French would say about the induction of Kestin and Vonk. Meanwhile, Miller and Williams join Tom Burrell as the only Black Creative Hall of Famers—inadvertently spotlighting how The One Club has failed to recognize iconic trailblazers like Georg Olden, Roy Eaton and Caroline Jones. The One Club for Creativity should be renamed The One Club for Exclusivity.
The One Club Announces Latest Inductees Into its Creative Hall of Fame
By Kyle O’Brien
The One Club for Creativity has announced the latest group of advertising, design, marketing and education innovators who will be inducted into the Creative Hall of Fame in October, and it includes a diverse mix of innovators.
The non-profit that supports and celebrates the global creative community through efforts including creative boot camps, the One Show and One School, has named eight new inductees to add to the list of creative luminaries in advertising and design, which started with the induction of Leo Burnett in 1961.
The latest inductees to join the hall of fame are:
• Joe Duffy, branding and design innovator, Founder, Chairman, Duffy & Partners;
• John Hunt, co-founder of internationally recognized South African agency TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris, global creative chair, TBWA\Worldwide;
• Cheryl D. Miller, graphic designer, writer, artist, theologian, and decolonizing historian known for her contributions to racial and gender equality in the graphic design field;
• Nancy Vonk and Janet Kestin, former co-chief creative officers at Ogilvy Toronto, co-founders of the Swim leadership lab;
• Carol H. Williams, president, CEO, chief creative officer and owner, Carol H. Williams Advertising, the longest-running U.S. independent multicultural agency
Educators Hall of Fame
• Ron and Pippa Seichrist, co-founders, Miami Ad School
The black-tie Creative Hall of Fame induction ceremony, which is a fundraising gala to support The One Club’s many global DEI programs, will take place on October 27 at Tisch Skylights at The Shed, Hudson Yards in New York.
Inductees are nominated and voted on by The One Club board of directors. Those chosen must have proven their impact, influence and inspiration on the industry.
“The Creative Hall of Fame is the ultimate recognition of a storied career of a visionary creative professional,” said Kevin Swanepoel, CEO, The One Club in a statement. “More importantly, this newest group of inductees transcend advertising: they influence pop culture, uplift underrepresented groups, and inspire the next generation of creative thinkers and doers.”
Additional inductees will be announced soon. Event and ticket details are available [at The One Club website.]
Campaign spotlighted the late Caroline Jones as part of its #TellHerStory series. Sorry, but the piece feels kinda lazy, as it appears the reporter only spoke with IPG SVP Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Heide Gardner. Granted, it might have been difficult to find additional sources, as there are fewer than 100 Black women holding executive positions in the U.S. advertising industry. Gardner remarked that Jones would be “disappointed to see where we are and that we are still having the same conversations about having diversity at the table.” Actually, the entire industry should be disappointed—and embarrassed. Instead, when it comes to delegating, diverting and denying diversity, the chronic offenders are not only forgiven, they’re awarded ADCOLOR® trophies.
‘She would be disappointed’: How the ad industry still fails black talent
Adland is still not living up to the legacy of Caroline Jones, one of the first black female vice-presidents of a major agency.
By Nicola Kemp
“We will not let you fail.”
The six words that advertising pioneer Caroline Jones said to Heide Gardner as she prepared to launch a talent and diversity initiative for the American Advertising Federation in the 1970s. It’s a commitment that reflects Jones’ living, breathing legacy as one of the first black female vice-presidents of any major agency and a champion of young talent.
As senior vice-president and chief diversity and inclusion officer at Interpublic, Gardner is still one of the most powerful and thoughtful drivers of diversity in the creative industries. And Jones has had a major impact on her career. “The reason she and other black icons in the industry wanted to launch this talent programme was that they were so tired of hearing ‘We can’t find any’ as an excuse to the lack of diversity in advertising,” Gardner says. “The entire programme was designed to take that excuse off the table.”
Yet, more than thirty years after the launch of the scheme, that same excuse remains firmly on the table. In many ways, the ad industry as it stands has not lived up to Jones’ legacy and, in doing so, failed generations of diverse talent. Reflecting on Jones’ “huge legacy”, Gardner says she would be “disappointed to see where we are and that we are still having the same conversations about having diversity at the table.”
She adds: “In terms of her disappointment, it would include all the thousands of people who came into the industry 22 years ago when we started the programme. Of all of those people, so few of them are at the helm of major agencies.”
Garnder notes that Jones and many people of a ethnic-minority background who came into the industry did so in order to influence the portrayal of people of colour. “That mattered deeply to her and it still matters now. I can’t tell you how many essays I read from young students that say I want to be at the table to make that change,” she points out.
A legacy of hope
Thirty years ago, a small column in Campaign noted the rise of Jones’ mould-breaking career. The article announcing Interpublic’s affiliation with a “new black shop” commented on the nine out of 10 failure rate of previous “black-managed agencies”. Paul Foley, then Interpublic’s chairman, was quoted as saying: “Black-owned agencies in the past have lacked professionalism, sound financial guidance, strong back-up support services and national and international scope. Our affiliation with Mingo, Jones, Guilmenot has the answer to all of these handicaps.”
Jones, one of the three founding partners of this fledgling agency, was creative services director and described in the article as “the highest-paid black creative in the US and the first black female vice-president of any major agency”.
Back then, the lack of support — and, at times, out-and-out racism — experienced by ethnic minorities in the ad industry was often ignored. For critics of all the press coverage focusing on diversity today — who are either “bored”, dismiss it as “virtue-signalling” or see it as distraction from the work — perhaps Jones’ legacy will provide a much-needed pause for thought.
Because what was sidelined was the impact and business importance of multicultural media; in essence, the work wasn’t as good because it did not understand or represent the markets it sought to serve. According to Gardner, the ad industry trade press did not focus on covering the multicultural side of the business. Instead, it was multicultural media that championed the sector and the individuals within it.
It is a state of play that ethnic-minority people are still dealing with, Gardner points out: “Having a high profile is really important, but it is having a profile internally within the business you work for that drives whether or not you are promoted. This idea of visibility is a problem for women and people of colour.”
True definition of a trailblazer
Having graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in English and science, Jones began her advertising career in 1963 as a secretary and copywriter trainee at J Walter Thompson, an agency where she rose to the position of creative director. She ultimately left Mingo, Jones, Guilmenot (later Mingo-Jones) to launch her own companies — Creative Resources Management and Caroline Jones Advertising, where she was president at the time of her death in 2001.
“She had a huge amount of social capital outside of the industry and she used that to help elevate the issue of diversity,” Gardner explains. This effort culminated in a huge summit that looked at diversity and the allocation of advertising dollars. Jones brought together the likes of Al Sharpton, the Association of National Advertisers and 4A’s alongside members of congress and federal government agencies. “One of the thing she did so well was bring all the sections of the industry together — it was a packed room at the Waldorf,” Gardner recalls.
Frustration as a force for change
Yet, despite being a true trailblazer with an impact far beyond the traditional realms of adland, Jones was at times “extremely frustrated”, Gardner remembers: “White executives and creators were able to leave their agencies, set up shop at a hotel room and immediately get clients. Someone like her didn’t get that opportunity as easily.”
It would be tempting to sugar-coat Jones’ career progression, but to not tell the truth of her struggle would be to ignore the barriers she had to face. “You have to remember that some went into the business as entrepreneurs not just because they saw business opportunities that were being overlooked, but also because they could not see business opportunities for themselves and they wanted to create those opportunities for young talent,” Gardner explains.
When Jones did strike out on her own, one of her founding clients was KFC. She had previously been the brains behind the brand’s hugely successful “We do chicken right” campaign.
Speaking truth to power
Reflecting on Jones’ lasting impact on the industry, Gardner says: “She spoke truth to power and I feel obligated to do the same. She used her social capital, her influence, to do what she could to make a difference and that is a powerful message to everyone.”
Jones was all about opening doors and dedicated her warmth, energy and time into supporting the next generation. Gardner notes that Jones used to show up at student programmes as long as her health permitted and, in many ways, connecting with and championing young talent was her life’s work.
Here is perhaps the point in the story when you might expect a glib statement about the power of role models. But for Gardner, the issue is far more complex than that: “It is not just a question of ‘You can’t be it if you can’t see it’, it is also a question of proof points — is your organisation somewhere where people like you can really make it?”
As Campaign speaks to Gardner, a blog post written by Kai Deveraux Lawson, a producer who has worked at agencies including Wunderman, AKQA and Momentum Worldwide, has gone viral. In the article, she describes the micro-aggressions that led her to quit her job in advertising. She writes: “I used to wonder why people of color leave the advertising industry, never return. It was hard to understand how someone could leave the set of skills they’ve worked so hard to refine, and the knowledge that’s taken so long to gain, only to never look back. Today, I can say from experience, that when it comes to mental health and peace, drastic times will always call for drastic measures.”
“I call it the thousand cuts,” Gardner says. “This is the power of the small. With #MeToo and #TimesUp, we are so focused on the obvious and the egregious that we aren’t paying attention to the power of ‘small’.” She explains that people could respond to comments or actions differently due to their identity and all these small things can add up and become internalised.
“My generation — we expected these kinds of things to happen. We had this mutual support and understanding that helped with resilience,” Gardner continues.
“Millennials are unprepared and shocked by these things. They ask: did that really happen? Does that mean what I think it does? Those are the issues that the business world has to focus on.
“What happens to people as human beings is, over time, you can internalise those thousand cuts and you can lose self-esteem and your faith in yourself.”
To talent from diverse backgrounds, the message is silent but clear: we won’t just let you fail, we will uphold a system in which you are almost destined to. In 2018, it should not require a leap of faith for the creative industries to work towards a level playing field — a legacy that Jones would be proud of.
Pictured above: Caroline Jones, centre, with Bob Johnson, founder, BET; Clarence Smith, co-founder, Essence; Earl Graves Sr., founder, Black Enterprise; and Tom Burrell, founder, Burrell Communications Group
Advertising Age spotlighted the 100 Most Influential Women in Advertising. Highlights included Caroline Jones among the Innovators.
Caroline Jones
Founder, Caroline Jones Advertising
As one of the most successful African-American women in advertising, Caroline Jones left an indelible mark on adland. In addition to being the first black woman creative director at J. Walter Thompson—where she worked her way up from secretary and copywriter posts—Ms. Jones held executive positions at BBDO and other general-market agencies. Later she launched and co-founded several well-respected specialty shops, including Caroline Jones Inc., where she was president at the time of her death at age 59 in 2001. Some of her biggest clients included McDonald’s, American Express, Anheuser-Busch and Kentucky Fried Chicken, which took Ms. Jones’ “We Do Chicken Right” campaign and adopted it as its general-market slogan. “Her importance in the industry was not fully understood,” ad exec Ted Pettus old Ad Age near the time of Ms. Jones’ death. “There are all too few role models for African-American men and women in this business, and Caroline was one of them.”
Ad Age recognized three Black women in the Power Players category.
Pam El
VP-Marketing and Advertising, State Farm
Pam El, VP-marketing and advertising for State Farm, has kept the nation’s-largest auto insurer at the forefront of an ultra-competitive category with massive ad spending and contemporary marketing.
“Like a Good Neighbor” is now “Get to a Better State,” while the insurer’s familiar red three-oval logo was revamped to remove “auto, fire, life,” emphasizing aggressive moves into other services such as State Farm Bank. It was the company’s first logo refresh in nearly 60 years.
Ms. El joined State Farm in 2002 after stints at the Martin Agency, US West and Terabeam. Her outside initiatives include serving on the board of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. At State Farm, she encourages teamwork, including among the marketer’s various agencies. “They can’t have my back if they are at each other,” she said at an industry conference a couple years ago.
Ann Fudge
CEO, Y&R
In a lengthy mid-1990s profile about her glass-ceiling-breaking ability, Ann Fudge cited the race riots she lived through following Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination as a transformative experience. “They made me incredibly determined,” she told The New York Times.
“I wanted to do something that black people hadn’t done before.” General Mills and Kraft Foods (she was president of Maxwell House at the latter) she did just that at Y&R, becoming CEO at one of the largest agencies in the business—a rarity for a black female. While she was unable to stem account losses at the agency and retired three years later in 2006, her appointment is seen as a watershed for adland. She also served as a member of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
Renetta McCann
Chief Talent Officer, Leo Burnett
One of the most prominent female and African-American executives in the advertising and marketing industries, Renetta McCann started her career in 1978 at Leo Burnett. She rose steadily through the ranks to become global CEO of Starcom MediaVest, the giant Publicis Groupe-owned media-investment arm, in 2005. Ms. McCann was always a multitasker: She won and led the Sony Consumer Electronics business in 1991 at Starcom while also becoming a mother. She juggled diaper-changing with media plans for 28 separate Sony product lines.
“When you’re in a meeting with Renetta she’s always thinking three meetings ahead,” Dan Albert, then exec VP-chief media strategist for Starcom USA, told Ad Age in a 2001 interview. “You have to be on your guard.”
And now it is potential hires who will need be on their guard: Ms. McCann emerged from a consulting post to rejoin Leo Burnett this month as chief talent officer.
