A Note from Our Creative Director Regarding Race in Advertising

Addressing the lack of diversity in one of our biggest communication mediums

I’ve never been more aware of racial inequality than I am right now, and I suspect the same is true for a lot of people in our country. I’m learning about the experiences of people who don’t look like me, reading about a history of injustice that was missing from my classrooms, and exploring a world outside my personal sphere. We, as Americans, are witnessing a long-overdue sea change in our country’s racial divide. People of color are rightfully demanding true, actual equality on all fronts of American life — and how bizarre is it to even read a statement like this more than 50 years after the American Civil Right’s Movement?

Yet, here I am, a white man, sitting comfortably in my office, taking a break from my deadlines, working in an industry that is one of the least diverse in the nation. I have been a part of advertising agencies, large and small, for more than a decade, and I can count the number of African Americans I’ve worked with on my hands, with no fear of running out of fingers. Of those six or seven people I counted, only two are creatives. Just two. When taking into account the sizable group of creatives I’ve known (or just seen on the periphery), that appallingly low number of African American creatives represents a fraction of a percent.

Advertising is a large and powerful means of communication, touching almost every single person, in some way, every single day. And while we rely on strategy sessions and target audience statistics to craft our messages, so many of our ideas, our words and our executions are informed by the worlds we’ve built around ourselves — worlds derived from and curated by highly personal experiences. And if we, as an industry, are communicating via an overwhelmingly white experience, then not only are we missing the strategic mark with 13 percent of the American population, we are actively perpetuating the dangerous idea that the African American experience isn’t important and that African Americans don’t have a say in how they are advertised to.

Look, this isn’t a problem that our industry hasn’t noticed — I’ve talked about it with other advertising professionals since I got into the business, though I’ve yet to see any action taken on it. And I don’t know what the right answer is. But I’m listening. I’m learning. And I’m taking action where I can, starting with my roster of freelancers. As I look down my list of advertising professionals, I see an obvious need for people of color, and I’m going to work to start filling those empty boxes with the names of people who don’t look like me. An increase in diversity within the advertising industry is imperative. It will do more than give us a better understanding of how to communicate to everyone — it will help ensure everyone’s life experience matters.

RT Ferrell
Creative Director, UpperNinety