Dongkwan’s Advertising World

It has been said that the advertising industry does not embody a diverse employment.

True, statistics show that the ad industry’s minority professionals stayed relatively low, perhaps not much different from about 20 years ago. And that is why the ad industry has been at risk, and recent efforts to have a more inclusive industry have been doing pretty well. Well, the truth is, it’s doing pretty well from a statistical point of view.

You see, even when it comes to advertising - where creatives and number crunchers perform together to please its clients - when it becomes a matter of saving a whole industry, it simply loses all creativity and solely relies on numbers. That’s what the current ad industry seeks - to create higher percentages of minorities in the industry.

Some may say, that’s all that the ad industry needs. Well, I don’t think so. The fundamental value and image of the ad industry is that it understands what the people need, whereby they use creativity based on factual statistics to achieve results. What’s funny is that the ad industry tries to incorporate more minorities based on the fact that minorities will be able to understand the different cultures that are amongst the American population. Yes, most customers in the U.S. aren’t American-American. In fact, what is American-American?

Here’s the big problem. The U.S. ad industry only seeks minorities who are raised in America. Yes, it helps, but how does it help achieve the solution to more diverse perspectives in advertising? I mean, any one of any race who was raised in America probably drank Coke and have shopped at Wal-Mart and have watched Oprah and watched the Super Bowl. If everybody loves the same thing, does the same thing, and eats the same thing, how different can one approach when it comes to looking for creative solutions?

Here’s my solution. Don’t look for minorities because they just raise the diversity numbers. Look down to the personal level - “what truly makes them diverse?” Look at me, I’ve lived across so many cultures - South Africa, Tunisia, Argentina, Korea, Romania, and the United States. But as a student, there’s hardly any internships or awards that I can enter - even those that are meant to “increase diversity.” Why? Because I have to be a U.S. Citizen or a Resident Alient to be eligible (of course, I’m an alient from outta space just happening to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to be called a non-eligible alien).

Yes! The ad industry needs diversity! And yes! Having more minorities is important! But is the ad industry trying to do it simply to look good or to create more good? If the ad industry truly wants to create a diverse environment for better perspectives, I think it is time to consider digging deeper into the meaning of the word - diversity. After all, it’s the ad industry’s role to understand the people. Why not understand the people who will create the ads for all this?

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Diversity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.