9833: Ad Age BHM Rebuttal.

Must say the Advertising Age Black History Month celebration was pretty lame. No offense to the Black executives spotlighted in the series, but there really wasn’t a lot of new ground covered. Additionally, segregating the interviews in The Big Tent lessened the chance of non-Black readers perusing the content. Why are White adpeople allowed to hide during the event? Like dealing with diversity, Black History Month should be an opportunity for everyone to engage and enhance personal cultural competence. Ad Age should have asked White leaders the same questions posed to the Black executives. The trade publication minimally could have produced something like the piece below (click to enlarge).

9821: Miracle Whip White.

Adweek presented the latest Miracle Whip commercial scheduled to air during the Academy Awards broadcast. The spot is awful for reasons that go beyond its clichéd, contrived writing and art direction. Specifically, its Whiteness makes the message irrelevant to contemporary America—and underscores the cultural cluelessness of the commercial’s creators.

9808: Blacks In Adland.

From Advertising Age…

African-American Execs on Life in Adland

Agency and Marketing Leaders Talk About Inspirations, Challenges and, Yes, Diversity

By Ad Age Staff

It’s hardly a secret that adland in the U.S. doesn’t even come close to being representative of the population to which it is tasked with selling things. While things aren’t quite as bad as they were during the “Mad Men” days, it’s a fact that the racial makeup of most general-market agencies hasn’t changed much since the 1970s.

So rather than mark Black History month with yet another round of numbers that haven’t changed or with well-meaning efforts by holding companies and trade organizations that will have critics rolling their eyes, we figured we would simply talk to some African-Americans prominent in the industry.

Who are they? Whether on the marketer or the agency side, they’re leaders focused first and foremost on getting the job done: seeking creative ways to sell things to consumers.

We’ve compiled and trimmed answers here, but stay tuned to AdAge.com as we post the longer individual interviews over the next few days.

Ad Age: How/why did you get into the business?

Jimmy Smith, chairman-CEO-CCO, Amusement Park Entertainment: I said it before and I’ll say it again: “Bewitched!” Darrin Stephens and his wife, Samantha, introduced me to the ad game. If it weren’t for Endora, Darrin would’ve been living the life! And Larry Tate taught me to beware of account people. (Just kidding!)

Leontyne Green, U.S. marketing manager, Ikea North America: As a restaurant general manager, I became curious about the links between consumer behavior and purchase intent, and my ability to drive my business. I subsequently received my MBA from Clark Atlanta University as a way to transition into marketing. I started my marketing career at Johnson & Johnson’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare.

Rob Jackson, U.S. director-marketing, McDonald’s: As a novice student, it was simply exciting. The ability to influence and understand consumer behavior was incredible. And to see it applied in a strategic format in the development of communications, plans and programs was fascinating.

Ad Age: Any advertising or marketing role models?

Kheri Holland Tillman, VP-trade marketing and sales strategy, Heineken USA: One person who stands out is Ann Fudge, who after being at Kraft Foods … went on to be president at Y&R . She has been a mentor to me over the past years. She and I worked together at Kraft . To be able to see an African-American female excel in business and in advertising was something that you don’t see that often—you don’t see it enough.

Ms. Green: During my time at CAU, I had the opportunity to meet and be exposed to Ann Fudge and Kenneth Chenault. Those discussions were great opportunities to listen and learn from other African-American leaders in corporate America.

Keith Cartwright, creative chairman of soon-to-be-named agency: Well, aside from Alma and Arthur Cartwright, I’d have to say Dan [Wieden]. You cannot look at that company, over the past 30 years, on so many levels, and not admire what they’ve created. Now, Dan’s not black. Although he told me once he wanted to be.

Mr. Smith: Pop owned a few different businesses. He had an entrepreneurial spirit. He even owned an Arby’s. So I learned a lot from him. I gotta give Alma Hopkins and Lewis Williams some dap. They both worked at Burrell, my first gig. At FCB in Chicago, Al Hawkins took it from there, along with Gwen Dawkins. … Jo Muse—the godfather of how I approach advertising today—gave me my big break when he hired me to work on Nike at Muse Cordero Chen. Then there was the “W&K and the rest is history” era. Dan W. hooked a brotha up. [Mr. Smith’s complete list will be posted online.]

Jayanta Jenkins, global creative director-Gatorade, TBWA /Chiat/Day, Los Angeles: My first role model was Jimmy Smith, who took me under his wing as a mentor shortly after I started at the Portfolio Center back in 1994 after graduating [from Virginia Commonwealth University]. … Once I got started (at The Martin Agency), Pam El [VP-marketing at State Farm] was someone who really helped when I first got in the business.

Ad Age: What are your thoughts on marketing segmentation?

Kimberly Paige, assistant VP/African-American marketing group, Coca-Cola North America: Market segmentation is important because you have to ensure your brands are connecting with the right people at the right time with the right message and offering. … This doesn’t necessarily imply that ethnicity is the only way to segment consumers. Like most characteristics, ethnicity is an important identifier, but the degree of its importance can be very situational or contextual. And sometimes people see themselves as more than one segment. Our approach is not an either/or but an “and” strategy.

Ms. Green: When the insights are used appropriately, in a manner that supports the values, beliefs or culture of their consumer vs. perpetuating broad generalizations, marketers can begin to build trust for their brands.

Ms. Tillman: [It’s] necessary, but it’s not as simple as segmentation by African-American, Hispanic and white. It needs to be the psychographics along with the demographics. … So you have to make sure that you’re breaking it down into more than just an ethnic group.

Mr. Jackson: Segmented marketing is critical. It’s an established discipline. Whether it’s based on ethnicity, age or sex, segmentation is a way to get to those high-opportunity consumers in a very efficient way.

Ad Age: What do you think about the diversity issue in adland?

Mr. Cartwright: The conversation has changed, and people are much more aware than five years ago. That said, the numbers across-the-board are still anemic … and don’t give a fair representation of people we’re marketing to.

Ms. Green: There is a huge opportunity to increase diversity among the more senior roles, on both the creative and account sides. There has been an increase in diversity among junior roles [in agencies] on the account side, but I [see more] opportunity for increased diversity on the creative side. And I think there is a need for African-American-focused agencies.

Mr. Smith: I’m not 100% sure, because I didn’t do a survey back in the day, but I could have sworn there were more black folks in the biz when I began my career. … If the African-American shops are smart (and they are) they’ll seize the moment, understand the opportunity, make like Don Cornelius and provide clients with the hippest trips in American advertising. Most general-market agencies can’t fake the funk, and African-American agencies should stop running away from the funk.

Mr. Jenkins: It has changed and continues to change for the better on a daily basis. … [But] I think until there is even more diversity in general-market agencies, there will continue to be a need for African-American, Hispanic and Asian shops.

Ms. Paige: Diversity is an opportunity in the ad agency space. Given the shift in the consumer landscape, and the cultural exchange and fluidity that is happening among all people, especially youth and millennials, it is incumbent that agencies continuously evolve to ensure they have in-depth knowledge and a grasp of all consumers.

Ad Age: What are your thoughts on African-Americans and entrepreneurialism in advertising and marketing?

Mr. Cartwright: Entrepreneurialism is a way of thinking. It’s an approach to life. There’s so much going on right now in media and tech, I think it’s a great time for anyone to start a company, regardless of race.

Mr. Jenkins: Prince left Warner Bros. a decade ago because he didn’t like the way record execs were taking a lion’s share of profit from what he created. … I think that’s what you’re seeing in our industry. People who want to change the business model and blaze new territory for the way our ideas are developed.

Mr. Smith: Starting my own company was an easy decision. It had nothing to do with being black and everything to do with wanting to take brands to the moon, Mars and the stars via advertising that didn’t look or smell like advertising. I just simply wanted to make like Bill Bernbach, Georg Olden, Lee Clow, Dan Wieden, John Jay, Jo Muse and Jon Kamen and change the game. … As for other blacks starting their own businesses, I predict in seven years we won’t be having this conversation—because many brands will be out of business if we’re still having this conversation in seven years. And the CMOs of most brands are intelligent. They know what time it is. They see the handwriting on the wall. They know what color the money is. It’s black and yellow, brown AND white.

9751: Corporate Cultural Collusion Kool-Aid.

Advertising Age reported that Kraft is shifting its Kool-Aid account from Ogilvy to Saatchi & Saatchi, citing the need for a “fresh perspective” on the brand. Right. First of all, everyone knows that minorities comprise a key audience for Kool-Aid (MultiCultClassics addressed this topic last year). So moving the work from one outdated White agency to another outdated White agency will hardly lead to freshness. Once again, Kraft is showing its commitment to supplier diversity is total bullshit. And the food company’s business sense—in terms of partnering with experts capable of sparking sales—is pathetic too. It seems like “fresh perspective” is code for Corporate Cultural Collusion.

Saatchi Snags Kraft’s Kool-Aid, Capri Sun

Marketer Cites Need for ‘Fresh Perspective’ on Beverage Brands

By Rupal Parekh

Kraft is once again rejiggering its roster, handing Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi & Saatchi creative duties for Kool-Aid and Capri Sun. Those beverage brands were previously handled by WPP’s Ogilvy.

Agency representatives either declined to comment or referred calls to Kraft Foods. Bridget A. MacConnell, Kraft ‘s senior manager-corporate affairs for beverages, told Ad Age that Saatchi’s New York office will be responsible for handling the two accounts and said the impetus was a desire for new creative thinking.

“While we appreciate our long partnership with Ogilvy, we needed a fresh perspective as we drive our refreshment beverage brands forward,” she said via email.

The pace with which Kraft continues to make changes to its agency roster is astounding. A Wall Street analyst recently found that between 2009 and 2010 Kraft had switched ad agency assignments on brands accounting for a whopping 48% of its total U.S. measured media spending.

The changes in the company’s agency relationships are part and parcel of a much larger wave of organizational changes at Kraft, which is in the midst of splitting into two companies—one focused on the North American grocery business, and another that concentrates on snacks. As a result of the split, Kraft has announced that it will slash up to 1,600 jobs. Meanwhile, the company is in the thick of ushering in a barrage of new products.

For Saatchi, the win expands its place on Kraft’s roster of agencies after winning creative duties last October for the world’s largest gum brand, Trident.

It also provides a continuation of some good momentum to kick off 2012, helpful on the heels of its late December loss of the JC Penney account after a five-year relationship. In the past month alone, Saatchi has picked up these additional Kraft assignments, a new creative assignment for the Sapphire credit card by Chase, and has been called in to help out on Miller Lite with a new brand campaign.

Between January and November of 2011, Kraft, which is the 32nd biggest national advertiser per the Ad Age DataCenter, devoted between $35 million and $40 million in domestic measured media to Capri Sun, and about $20 million on Kool-Aid, Kantar data shows.

For Ogilvy it means a further reduction of its Kraft business. The agency once handled a broad array of brands for the packaged-goods giant, but over the past few years it has gradually seen many of its Kraft accounts flee to other agencies. It continues to have two big global pieces of Kraft business, Tang and Cadbury chocolate, and also does work for Honeymaid graham crackers.

Contributing: E.J. Schultz

9740: Tecate Mimics General Motors…?

Advertising Age reported Heineken’s Tecate consolidated its U.S. advertising account with an agency in Mexico. ¡Ay Caramba! Last week, General Motors consolidated its $3 billion media and planning duties with a U.K. firm. Now Tecate has pulled a similar move. It’s outrageous! Scandalous! Oh, wait a minute. Tecate yanked its billings from a faux Latino shop backed by a White agency in New York City? Um, never mind.

Tecate Consolidates U.S. Advertising With Mexican Agency

Cost-Cutting Move Follows Other Global Consolidation Efforts

By E.J. Schultz

In a cost-cutting move, Heineken’s Tecate beer brand is moving U.S. advertising from Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners’ U.S. Hispanic unit Ramona to its longtime Mexican agency, Olabuenaga Chemistri, the brewer told Ad Age.

The consolidation means all Tecate and Tecate Light U.S. advertising—including digital—will be run from south of the border, an unusual arrangement for a brand sold in the U.S. Tecate, a Mexican import, was already an oddity among advertisers for focusing its entire U.S. account on the Hispanic market, particularly Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans. However, the brand lately had been testing a limited number of English-language ads.

It is the loss of a key account or Ramona. The agency did not return a call for comment this afternoon. Olabuenaga Chemistri, on the other hand, gains its first foothold in the U.S. market. The agency, based in Mexico City, has experience with several high-profile accounts, including work in Mexico for Bacardi and General Motors, as well as Mexican milk brand Leche Lala.

While Heineken’s push for global synergies drove the move, Tecate considered the creative consequences, said Tecate VP-Marketing Felix Palau. “If we found out there was any risk in switching to a single creative approach coming from Mexico, we [were] not going to conduct [the] move,” Mr. Palau said. “But that was not the case.”

Indeed, Heineken reviewed new proposals from both Olabuenaga Chemistri and Ramona before making the switch, he said. Under the new arrangement, the same Spanish-language ads will air in Mexico and the U.S. But Olabuenaga Chemistri will also create English language ads to air in several U.S. markets in the Southwest.

Tecate is the fourth-largest U.S. import behind Corona Extra, Heineken and Modelo Especial, according to 2010 rankings from Beer Marketer’s Insights, the latest available. But the brand has been slipping, with grocery-store sales down 8.38% in the year ending Dec. 25, according to SymphonyIRI, which excludes Walmart Stores and liquor stores. Heineken USA spent $17 million in measured media on Tecate and Tecate Light in the U.S. in 2010, according to Kantar Media.

Ramona has had Tecate since 2007, when it was called Adrenalina and partly owned by MDC Partners. The agency was formed specifically for the Tecate pitch and all three partners at the time had worked with Eduardo Casas, the then-Heineken USA executive leading the review. In 2010, the agency was absorbed by MDC Partners sibling Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners following the departure of the last of Adrenalina’s three founders, Manuel Wernicky. Adrenalina was renamed Ramona in 2010 when Sandra Alfaro, a management partner and director of account management at Vidal Partnership, was hired as general manager.

Under Ramona, Tecate last year sought to expand from its traditional base of new U.S. immigrants to more acculturated Hispanics by adding humor to its ads.

Going forward, Tecate will keep its “con caracter” tagline, which positions it as the drink for men “with character,” Mr. Palau said. But ads will be tweaked to ensure they work in Mexico and the U.S. For instance, U.S. ads now tend to overtly play up Hispanic notions of character that Mr. Palau said even border on U.S. stereotypes of Hispanic men. “This new campaign and this new creative approach doesn’t necessarily talk about the difference between a Hispanic manifestation of character and a more universal manifestation of character. Now we are talking to a broader base of Hispanics [so] it’s less relevant to say ‘I’m Hispanic.’ The fact that Tecate is a Mexican beer and they will see Hispanic talent in the ads, that’s more than enough.”
The agency switch follows other maneuvers by Amsterdam-based Heineken to seek synergies. In November, the brewer launched a review to consolidate its global media planning and buying under one shop, pitting roster shops Starcom MediaVest of Publicis Groupe and WPP’s Mindshare against each other. Heineken has also streamlined procurement. And last year it appointed independent shop Wieden & Kennedy as global creative agency for its flagship Heineken brand.

Olabuenaga Chemistri is co-owned by Ana Maria Olabuenaga and Jorge Cuchi, who is the chief creative officer. The agency has a partnership with Publicis Groupe that gives it access to some of the company’s resources, including agencies such as Leo Burnett Hispanic shop Lapiz, which is based in Chicago. Olabuenaga Chemistri is said to be considering hiring people from Ramona to help service the account, and might keep some presence in New York.

9716: C’MON WHITE MAN! Episode 17.

(MultiCultClassics credits ESPN’s C’MON MAN! for sparking this semi-regular blog series.)

Advertising Age honored mcgarrybowen as Agency of the Year, so MultiCultClassics decided to jump on the bandwagon too.

The shop has undeniably enjoyed great success in recent years, and is often recognized for its old-school ways. Well, the throwback style goes beyond client services and rainmaking. The agency website boasts having a diverse staff—alongside a company portrait debunking the claim. And glancing at the people section reveals mostly White people in charge. But the biggest example of maintaining Mad Men traditions is Chief Digital Officer John McGarry III, who happens to be the son of CEO John P. McGarry, Jr. Congratulations to the McGarry clan for proudly perpetuating the industry’s storied White male dominance and nepotism.

C’MON WHITE MEN!