The dearth of minorities working in advertising and P.R. has long been a touchy subject. When asked to justify the fact that agency ranks are almost universally white even in highly diverse metro areas like L.A. communications executives usually respond that there are very few qualified minority applicants.
Kim L. Hunter, founder of downtown L.A.-based P.R. firm Lagrant Communications which specializes in marketing to African Americans has long been frustrated by the shortage of minorities in the industry, so he decided to do something about it. In September he began raising funds for his newly formed Lagrant Foundation, which will provide scholarships to minority students in university communications programs.
Hunter sent letters to the heads of the 25 biggest advertising and 25 biggest P.R. agencies in L.A. County asking for support. He got one response, a $250 donation from ad agency BBDO West.
“I called a lot of them up, and they said they didn’t have any money,” Hunter said. “For many of my colleagues, this isn’t a priority. Their priority is getting revenues in the door.”
A 1997 survey by the Public Relations Society of America found that only 7 percent of its members were minorities. Comparable statistics don’t exist for the advertising industry, but the percentage is believed to be even lower.
And when it comes to top executives or agency heads, minority faces are practically non-existent. Only one of the 50 biggest advertising and P.R. agencies in L.A. has a minority chief. And that one, La Agencia de Orci & Asociados, is like Lagrant an entrepreneurial operation that targets a particular minority group.
“When you see African Americans at agencies, they tend to be at the front desk as the receptionist,” Hunter said.
So far, Hunter has raised $15,000 for his foundation, 10 percent of his $150,000 goal for the first year. Other than the BBDO contribution, all the money has come from non-communications corporations like Nissan North America and Atlantic Richfield Co.
That’s no surprise considering that corporations selling products to the consumer market have been more proactive in minority recruiting than marketing firms, which aim to sell their services to other businesses.
“Every agency I worked at, I was the only African American,” said Dierdre Francis-Dickerson, who worked at a number of P.R. agencies before moving to the corporate side. She is now manager of national community outreach at Nissan. “Agencies go back and say, ‘We can’t find any minority applicants.’ I think that’s been a cop-out catch-all for way too many years.”
Drug money
A substantial portion of the enormous P.R. account awarded to Fleishman-Hillard by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is coming to Los Angeles.
Overall, the anti-drug contract is potentially worth nearly $50 million with the White House paying $9.4 million the first year and retaining the option to continue the contract for an additional four years. And while Fleishman-Hillard’s Washington office is the lead contractor, the local office will be involved and two L.A. subcontractors have won a large piece of the business.
Century City-based Rogers & Associates has been chosen to be part of the strategic planning team on the account, and will handle entertainment-industry outreach. Executive Vice President Lynn Doll declined to reveal how much the agency’s portion of the account is worth, but public affairs P.R. sources peg it north of $1.5 million.
Rogers’ assignment is to convince entertainment-industry executives to change the way they portray drugs in TV shows, movies, music videos, etc. The goal is to create entertainment targeted at youth that shows the negative consequences of drug abuse.
The other local subcontractor is downtown L.A.-based Imada Wong Communications, which will target the anti-drug campaign at Asian Americans. Like Doll, Imada Wong President Bill Imada declined to reveal the size of his agency’s portion.
Imada Wong is one of a handful of P.R. agencies around the country that specialize in reaching Asians. Like Rogers, it’s been on a steep growth curve in recent years, and currently has about 30 employees.
In addition to providing Asian-themed P.R., Imada Wong has an unusual sideline for a P.R. agency: It provides sensitivity training to large corporations on how to deal with ethnic populations.
In seminars lasting anywhere from one to four days, the agency has taught employees of firms that include Kaiser Permanente, AT & T;, Bank of America, Nike and Lucent Technologies about how to deal with customers, suppliers, clients or media from different cultural backgrounds. It covers things like how to host a dinner attended by Chinese-American business people, or how to communicate with a reporter from a Korean-language newspaper.
“A little bit of effort that’s culturally sensitive is effective in getting more customers,” Imada said. “It might be as simple as putting a sign in a bank that’s written in Chinese, or knowing two simple phrases in a native language to break the ice.”
It can also help businesses avoid turning customers off. Imada points to a marketing gaffe by Volvo as an example. The Swedish automaker released a Volvo 244 model in the United States, but had a lot of trouble selling the car to Chinese Americans. The numeral 2 followed by the numeral 4, in Chinese, represents the phrase “easy death.”
Somehow, the Volvo Easy Death sedan wasn’t very appealing to Chinese buyers.
News Editor Dan Turner writes a weekly column on marketing for the Los Angeles Business Journal.
