A Touchy Subject

On Thursday, March 27^th at 5:00 PM, I attended my first “webinar.”  For those of you not familiar with the term, a webinar is an online seminar.  This particular panel session was designed and hosted by Adversity and the Multicultural Advertising Internship Program (MAIP).  Adversity is a newly formed non-profit organization dedicated to increasing minority involvement in the ad industry through education and networking, and the Multicultural Advertising Internship Program provides internships at ad agencies for creative advertising students with a multicultural heritage. 

The panel consisted of six individuals: four who are currently working in creative management positions at ad agencies around the country, and two students or former students of the advertising portfolio schools the Creative Circus and VCU Brandcenter.  The panelist make-up was important and effective, because the members were a diverse group in terms of job position, gender, age, and ethnicity.  They discussed their opinions on the preparation needed to secure a job in the ad industry—whether or not to attend a portfolio school, networking, and building your book (portfolio)—as well as experiences they have or have not had that they felt was unique to their race/ethnicity while working in the industry.

I won’t belabor you with details on job requirements or interviewing techniques, both of which were discussed at the webinar but which are not the purpose of my blog.  I’m most interested in the experiences minority individuals have while trying to create the ads we see everyday.  Perry Fair, a former creative director at the True Agency in California and a middle-aged African American, made a most telling comment (although I think he attempted to sugar coat it).  He said, and I’m paraphrasing, that he personally had not run into any obstacles while progressing in his creative career as an African American man.  He’s worked for predominantly African American ad agencies as well as the “big” ad firms.  But he also advised students to not let themselves be pigeon-holed into making only one type of ad, or ads for one particular group (he was referring to racial groups).

To me, that could be a potential obstacle for minority creatives.  Mr. Fair insinuated that there is a possibility that as a minority art director or copywriter, you could be hired by a "big" ad agency to work only on ads that target whatever racial group that you belong to.  I guess that's not a problem if you're Latino and only want to create ads for Latino consumers.  Then you might take a job working at a Latino-owned ad agency.  Otherwise, such hiring practices could potentially stifle your work as a creative.  What if you want to create a diverse group of ads for many different markets?  That won't be possible if the only campaigns your creative director gives you are things like marketing tortilla chips to the Mexican population in Atlanta.  I know that is an extreme example, but my point is that it is problematic to approach diversity in the industry in that way.  

I wish this obstacle that Mr. Fair briefly mentioned had been discussed more in the webinar.  I would have liked to know what he did to overcome it, since for him to mention it means he has some experience with that kind of limited job assignments.  But he didn't elaborate, and no other webinar participant touched the issue, so I was left with more questions than answers.  It was an interesting topic to bring up, though, and I think the webinar would've been stronger and more helpful to attendees if the panelists had discussed similar issues and had not recited the same old "polish your book" and "don't give up" rhetoric that most of us already know.