Last summer, KFC ran an ad in Canada featuring a black man eating fried chicken and licking his fingers, his face exposed to unused silverware.
Critics called the image racist, but the campaign was not cancelled. However, it was submitted this spring for a prestigious industry award in New York.
Nate Nichols, founder and creative director of Palette Group, a creative agency in Brooklyn, is one of several Black members of the panel of judges reviewing the submissions.
“My original response was sadness,” Mr. Nichols said. “It just means it’s not enough we’ve been able to get into the room.”
The ad did not win, and KFC Global did not respond to a request for comment. But the episode is emblematic of a multibillion-dollar advertising industry that in no way resembles the “Mad Men” era of the 1960s — that is, a lack of racial diversity.
The shortage, according to a new report, is particularly noticeable in New York City, the heart of the industry and also the largest advertising market in the United States. The disconnect can be costly as changes in media consumption favor younger and larger audiences.
There is also a need, as the unemployment rate in New York City for people of color remains stubbornly high, for other diversity in the industry that pays above-average salaries, is expected to continue to grow and requires relatively little formal training.
Of the nearly 70,000 advertising employees in New York at the end of last year, less than 8 percent were black, about 11 percent were Asian and less than 15 percent were Latino, according to a report released Monday by the Center for an Urban Future, a privacy research organization. general who seek to increase economic mobility. More than 58 percent of employees are women, many of whom are white. These figures make advertising among the least diverse industries in the city,
Black cultural expressions are everywhere in advertising, although few people of color work behind the scenes to create them, said Adrienne Lucas, head of diversity, equality and inclusion at One Club for Creativity, an industry trade group in New York.
“The bottom line is that our creativity is expected, but it’s not,” he said.
In other words, business is changing rapidly.
By 2028, the money spent on advertising in the United States could exceed $500 billion, a record, mainly due to the growth of digital media, said Paul Verna, vice president of content for Emarketer, a market research company.
Internet search advertising, especially on Google, has long been the largest spending category. But social media, including sponsorships on TikTok and Instagram, is growing rapidly, and is attracting a younger demographic, Mr Verna said.
Even on Madison Avenue that once defined the industry has lost some of its luster, as more companies move to the trendy areas of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.
The shift has brands and ad agencies focusing on a younger and broader audience, even as the boardroom remains white.
Diversification efforts in the industry in 2021, after the killing of George Floyd and the wave of racial justice protests, have stopped or reversed, according to a 2023 survey of more than 100 agencies by 4As, a national trade association.
White executives will own or run about three out of every four agencies by 2021, the survey found. The following year, the figure has jumped to nine in 10. A significant part of the industry is controlled by six major holding companies, including WPP and Publicis Groupe, which together have hundreds of agencies.
The report did not offer an explanation for the decline in nonwhite advertising professionals, but found that 64 percent of Black employees had spent two years or less at their current agency, the shortest tenure of any racial or ethnic group.
Industry experts say the explanation is simple: a lack of career growth opportunities for people of color.
“There’s a lot of fake ‘we’re doing something,’ and as soon as the cycle breaks, it’s back to being a white man-run company,” said Steve Stoute, chief executive and founder of Translation, a black-owned advertising firm in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood.
People of color seeking a seat at creative meetings are often the only dissenting voices to challenge culturally insensitive ideas, says Kai Deveraux Lawson, head of culture and marketing at Valerie, a creative agency.
“Just because you have a black or brown person in the room, and I’ve been in this situation myself, it doesn’t mean that person has the confidence or the power to influence anybody,” he said.
Even when the views of people of color are taken into account, the results are mixed, said Mr. Nichols, 36, of the Palette Group.
“You’re being treated as a monolith for your community, and that’s a very heavy burden,” he said.
Jody-Ann Crooks, 35, who works in health care advertising, grew up in Jamaica. He recalled a past job when an executive asked him if black people used coal or gas grills.
“All eyes on me and, first of all, ‘Is this person just asking me?'” she said. “It’s lonely and isolating.”
Critics attribute some recent examples of racial insensitivity to underrepresentation.
In 2017, Pepsi pulled an ad featuring Kendall Jenner, a white woman, handing a can of soda to a police officer, amid cheering protesters with signs that read “Join the conversation.” Critics slammed the ad for disparaging the Black Lives Matter movement and police violence.
But the lack of diversity in advertising is also a workforce issue, said Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for the Urban Future.
“There are a lot of jobs growing in New York, but not many that pay well,” he said. She pointed to the expansion of the home health care sector, which employs many women of color but pays minimum wage.
Reduced employment during the pandemic in sectors like retail has affected people of color. Black unemployment in New York City was nearly 8 percent in the first quarter of the year, compared with 3.3 percent for white workers, according to the city’s Economic Development Corporation.
That makes advertising an industry with big growth potential for people of color, Mr. Bowles said. In New York City, the average annual income in advertising is about $92,000, while the average private sector income citywide is $55,000, he said.
And job growth in the industry has been rapid. Despite a wave of layoffs during the pandemic, mostly in technology-related sectors, the advertising workforce has grown by nearly 50 percent over the past two decades, from 46,700 jobs in 2003 to 69,800 in 2023, outpacing private employment growth of 37 percent. at the same time.
“Most people don’t know projects like this exist,” said Melvin DeBerry, 37, an art director for the advertising department of a large tech company in Manhattan.
Last year, Mr. DeBerry was working at a steel mill in Memphis when he heard from a friend about One School, a free program starting in 2020 to help black creatives build their advertising portfolios. An aspiring former musician, he was accepted into a four-month virtual program and attends classes two nights a week after work. He said his new salary tops $100,000, the most he has ever earned.
Hiring people from diverse backgrounds is critical to the industry’s growth, said Joel Rodriguez, 36, executive director with creative company translation.
“It’s not just about skin color,” he said. “It’s diversity of thought,”
Some of the group’s most recent work includes campaigns for AT&T and high-tech helmets for college football players who are deaf or hard of hearing, and a well-received short film for the Beats by Dre headphone brand. The film asks: “You love black culture, but do you love me?”
Careers may be different. Mr. Rodriguez grew up in an apartment building in Flushing, Queens, where his father, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, was the superintendent. While studying marketing in college, Mr. Rodriguez worked as a janitor to pay the bills.
As graduation approaches, he has no job prospects and considers applying for a super in a new building near his home. But he had a cousin who was a driver for Mr. Stoute of Translation. Mr. Rodriguez asked his cousin to slip his resume into human resources.
The movement got its first apprentice. Absent that opportunity, he said, he would follow in his father’s career footsteps.
“Without that exposure,” Mr. Rodriguez said, “all we know is what we see.”
Susan C. Beachy contribute to research.
