Ad agency Interpublic Group acts as mentor to build diversity
— -- While ad veterans from around the globe gather in France this week for the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, U.S. companies still have an issue to deal with at home: diversity.
Despite a push by industry organizations for agencies to boost their recruitment of women, blacks, Asians and Hispanics, the industry continues to be a poster child for a dearth of diversity. It is an industry that speaks every day to multicultural audiences with $2 trillion in spending power, and the marketing messages created for those audiences need to reflect an understanding of their cultures.
Next week 10 associates will finish up the program, bringing the number of associates who finished the program to 25 since it began in 2004. Another dozen will finish next June.
While the total is small, IPG says the program has elevated diversity as a priority for its employees and managers. IPG, which has a workforce of 40,000 and 2007 revenue of $6.5 billion, says that increasing diversity in its workforce is essential for today's ad industry.
"It's perfectly clear that the marketplace, our customers and various regulatory agencies are demanding diversity," says Michael Roth, 62, who became IPG's chairman in 2004 and CEO in 2005.
His predecessor, David Bell, hired Heide Gardner in 2003 as IPG's diversity head, the first corporate-level diversity chief among the major companies. She developed the InterAct program. "Diversity is perceived as this insurmountable problem that has to be resolved," says Gardner, 50. "This is a way to capture talent."
N.Y.: Big change in the Big Apple
Minority hiring has been a particularly sore point in New York, one of the most diverse U.S. cities and the center of the U.S. ad industry.
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