ABSTRACT
Legal and ethical challenges regarding advertising directed to multicultural consumers arose in the late 1990s. First, the government became concerned that minority media was not being used to reach these audiences. Second, from a positive perspective, clients were becoming aware that effective advertising depended upon reaching African-American, Hispanic, Asian American, and other multicultural audiences through understanding their cultural beliefs and feelings. Yet, with the exception of several outstanding minority agencies, the advertising industry employed relatively few multicultural professionals. The American Advertising Federation, for which I served as president and
CEO, saw these challenges as opportunities. AAF began a strong diversity and inclusivity mission that has grown over the past twenty years. It began with educating the industry as to the importance of creating and disseminating advertising that was based on the cultural beliefs and values of the particular multicultural audience, and then recruiting and building a strong professional multicultural workforce to conduct the advertising. Success of the mission centered on creating a new way of thinking in the
advertising community. Up to this point the industry had believed it could reach all consumers with a general advertising message. Once clients came to understand that their central marketing theme would better attract these audiences through understanding their cultural thinking and feeling, they wanted to hire multicultural professionals to help do it. Today, promoting diversity and inclusivity in our industry and society, including portraying fair and realistic images, remains a mission supported by both business and personal ethics. Our multicultural initiatives-now under the banner “Mosaic”—are based on
both legal and ethical grounding. As shall be discussed, we successfully worked with the government in response to their concern that minority broadcasters were
being discriminated against. Also, the ad industry was not effectively recruiting multicultural professionals. While I never personally was aware of racial discrimination in my many encounters with clients, agencies and media companies, I kept hearing from executives that they wanted to have a more diverse workforce but couldn’t find the candidates. Recognizing that our multicultural heritage is one of America’s greatest
strengths, AAF determined to “do the right thing” through a mission of diversity and inclusivity. First, we surrounded ourselves with expert multicultural professionals. Then, together, we provided the industry with reasons why inclusivity is critical, how to achieve it through developing multicultural principles, and then we provided the industry with multicultural candidates.
