The Boomerang Effect

Movie character inspires one man to promote change in the advertising industry

Early last year, the NAACP, in conjunction with Washington, D.C.-based law firm Mehri & Skalet,  issued a sounding cry about the advertising industry: African Americans were grossly underrepresented. Sixteen percent of large advertising firms had no black managers or professionals, a rate 60% higher than in the overall labor market.

That finding came as no surprise to Lincoln Stephens. When the University of Missouri-Columbia graduate started his first advertising job at the Dallas-based agency TracyLocke in 2004, “I was one of only a few black males at a company of about 300 people,” he says.

The lack of African American advertising professionals has broad ramifications, says Janelle M. Carter, an associate with Mehri & Skalet. Last year, the law firm and the NAACP launched the Madison Avenue Project, which fights racial discrimination in the ad industry. “If ad agencies were more inclusive, they could take advantage of a broad ranging diversity in talent and greater creativity,” believes Carter. And so does Stephens.
After four years working in advertising, Stephens decided to channel his energy and expertise into helping the next generation of professionals by creating The Marcus Graham Project (www.marcusgrahamproject.org), a national initiative based in Dallas that provides training and mentorship to African American men in the advertising industry.

Named after Marcus Graham, the fictionial ad exec played by Eddie Murphy in the 1992 film Boomerang, the organization is designed to spark interest in the industry as the movie did for Stephens. “I remember seeing Boomerang, and there weren’t that many images of successful blacks in the media,” says Stephens, who is now 29. “The thing most prevalent in our country is advertising, but there aren’t a lot of places where one can get exposed to these careers.”

Last year, Stephens launched a boot camp, an 11-week program in which a team of African American men between 18 and 34 created real-world marketing and advertising campaigns. In last year’s inaugural run, the seven participants created campaigns for clients such as the City of Dallas and Los Angeles-based eco-friendly clothing manufacturer Broccoli City.  Besides the program, Stephens launched an online mentoring community (www.marcusgrahamproject.ning.com).  Today, the Internet forum boasts about 150 members who network, discuss industry trends, and share career advice. “Essentially, we’re building a strategic army to go out and lead,” say  Larry L. Yarrell II, a co-founding member of the program. “We’re preparing young men for a change in the industry and allowing them to use their raw talents to affect change.”

o fund the dream, Stephens relies on donations and personal savings. He shares office space with other media professionals to keep costs manageable, and boot camp participants used in-kind donations to produce their marketing campaigns. When the team needed to build a counter for a green awareness event, for example, they used leftover Styrofoam donated by a local construction facility. Stephens hopes the program’s initial

success will inspire larger donations since he’d like to offer boot campers stipends, and he estimates programming costs at $13,000 per participant. He’s also in the process of filing for 501(c)(3) status and choosing a board.
And although in the early stages, Yarrell says The Marcus Graham Project is gaining interest within the industry. “We’ve gotten calls from CEOs, young and old, who have heard or been affected by the program and they’re not just saying good job, but calling to see how they can be involved. It’s very positive. It’s very forward thinking.”
“You’re running full speed ahead, completing projects from start to finish,” says Quinton Wash of Dallas. After last year’s boot camp, the 25-year-old scored freelance advertising gigs from CBS Radio and TracyLocke, and this year he’ll create a Website for the upcoming play Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family.

Stephens aims to have The Marcus Graham Project serve as a breeding ground for companies seeking top talent. “Employers say, ‘I don’t know where to find diverse talent,’” Stephens says. “We’re giving them a place that they can go to see that we exist.”

This article originally appeared in the February 2010 issue of Black Enterprise magazine.

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Healthy, public discourse: Where has it gone?

Listen to the story on NPR February 5, 2010

Katrina vanden Heuvel has been the editor of The Nation since 1995 and publisher since 2005. She is the co-editor of Taking Back America — And Taking Down The Radical Right and, more recently, editor of The Dictionary of Republicanisms.

"We live in a world that increasingly demands more dialogue than monologue." Those are words from the founding manifesto crafted and issued earlier this week by a diverse group of bloggers, commentators, techies and politicos, calling for more question sessions with the president and the opposition party. I am one of those, along with Grover Norquist, who signed on. Here's why: These are times when unfiltered, unfettered public debate — rigorous, substantive, candid and civil — are rare and hard to find. I believe that "Demand Question Time" will help us to nurture a smart and vibrant democracy.

Last week we witnessed a rare event — President Obama met with GOP House members, and their debate was as riveting as the best reality show. It made us all remember that political exchange can be compelling, even entertaining! This project will enhance civic engagement — the winners will be the American people. At a moment when so many lament our hyperpolarized politics, here's something to celebrate: a cross-partisan coalition of new/old media and political folks who may not agree on everything, but who do agree that we can do better when it comes to encouraging unfettered and unmoderated discussions and debates.

That's why, along with my colleague Grover Norquist, I'm hoping "Question Time" could become the Americana equivalent of the British version of "question time" in their Parliament. I am a believer that more open dialogue can only enhance our democracy.

Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform. He is a member of the board of directors of the National Rifle Association and the American Conservative Union.

Katrina, one reason politics in the United States is so uninspiring and uninteresting is that it consists of long speeches by party leaders. Speeches allow one to go on and on at length, unchallenged, possibly inventing facts and certainly presenting only one side of the argument. In a debate, both sides make their case in real time. Debates are better than speeches; debates are competition. Speeches are monopolies. Debates are Macy's and Gimbels, roughing it up; speeches are the Department of Motor Vehicles. Notice that dictators like long speeches — there is no other side; there's no alternative view allowed. Debates are alive: Arguments are tested and honed. Debates, like the question time the British have in Parliament, promote politicians like Winston Churchill. Speeches get you politicians like George W. Bush and Barack Obama — and there are no teleprompters in the debates. Coaches and speechwriters — that works for politicians giving a public speech, but they do very little to prop up the incompetent in a debate.

This has happened in America: In the 1960s, Robert Kennedy and Ronald Reagan debated the Vietnam War. No one who saw that debate then, or on tape since, would have been surprised in later decades by Reagan's political abilities. He wasn't just a speech reader; he was an original thinker and a debater. This is why Katrina and I and many others are calling on President Obama and the Republican leaders in Congress to organize a regularly scheduled question time where the American people can watch our political leaders engage in debate, ask each other questions, and let us know what they're thinking and where they hope to take America.

I'd love to see more question time.

Super Bowl Shuffle: Why Marketers Will Shift to 'Platforms'

Brands That Continually Throw to Consumers Will Win Come Monday Morning and Beyond

Posted by Garrick Schmitt on 02.01.10 @ 11:19 AM

Garrick Schmitt

The teams playing in this year's Super Bowl have already been decided, but the Super Bowl shuffle for advertisers began in earnest last month when marketing mainstays like FedEx, General Motors and Pepsi made news by announcing they were opting out of this year's ad extravaganza.

But for those looking to gauge the health of the ad industry, Super Bowl advertising is a bit of red herring. CBS is charging about $2.5 million for 30 seconds of commercial time -- and rightly so. Rarely do you get so many Americans watching one event and actually enjoying the advertising. It's a tremendous opportunity for most brand marketers and we'd be foolish to look at this year's Super Bowl as proof of either the rejuvenation of the 30-second spot or the rejection of it.

That doesn't mean some won't try. After all, last year Hulu saw a 50% increase in site traffic after running ads during the Super Bowl and Denny's traffic to its website soared nearly 1,700% as consumers sought information about its free breakfast promotion.

There certainly will be advertising winners (and losers) on Super Bowl Sunday but let's hope that the Monday morning quarterback chatter doesn't obscure the larger shift at hand for marketers this year. 2010 will be the year of the "platform" for advertisers.

Unlike a website, banner, Facebook application or 30-second spot, a platform is an always-on digital environment that allows brands to run specific or multiple programs. The goal is to meaningfully engage consumers on multiple levels. For some brands, that means creating an immersive experience with integrated commerce. For others, it means enabling consumers to connect with each other in valuable, unexpected ways.

But for marketers, the real winners this year will be the brands who have built these platforms to engage consumers well after this year's Super Bowl becomes a distant memory -- there are another 364 days to worry about after all. Here's a look at some of the more interesting platforms in play today:

Pepsi's Refresh Everything

--> Community Action Platforms: Perhaps the biggest, and most noteworthy, push into this space comes from PepsiCo, which opted to sit out the Super Bowl to tout it's cause-marketing program Refresh Everything. The platform, which is inspired by crowdsourced ventures like Kickstarter, enables Pepsi to award grant money to consumers who suggest various ideas and iniatives for their communities. The effort is akin to other cause-marketing efforts like Procter & Gamble's Tide: Loads of Hope, where consumers purchase T-shirts, among other things, to fund Tide's effort to help families stricken by disaster with basic laundry services.

Best Buy's Ideax

--> Crowdsourcing Platforms: While not exactly new, enough brands are finding success using crowdsourcing platforms to generate insight and drive deeper consumer participation that we will surely see more this year. Starbuck's MyStarbucksIdea.com is clearly the outsized success here with tens of thousands of ideas collected and a vibrant community. Dell's Idea Storm falls into this category, as does Lego's Mindstorm. The most recent entrant is Best Buy's Ideax, which shares similar elements of the category but goes somewhat further by allowing users to search/browse by ideas generated "Nearby." The community here is both virtual and local.

Alice.com

--> Commerce Platforms: As more marketers move toward a platform model, clearly one of the benefits is allowing consumers to have a direct relationship with the brand that's not dependent on an existing network like Facebook or Yahoo! or a publisher like the New York Times. A natural outcome is that more and more brands will want to sell direct to consumers. Procter & Gamble announced that it will go direct to consumers this month (challenging Amazon and Walmart online) with an "eStore." Similarly, General Mills and a host of other CPG marketers are moving onto Alice.com, which is enabling direct e-commerce for heavy hitters like General Mills and Johnson & Johnson. Other more CPG-oriented players like Mattel are making similar moves, it recently launched its own e-commerce store too.

Lufthansa's MySkyStatus

--> Brand Experience Platforms: Experiential platforms come in many different shapes and sizes. Nike has shifted its marketing dollars to better support athletes through programs like Nike Plus and selling direct to consumers via its estore. Best Buy is building credibility in the music-instrument category by offering up expert guidance and videos. But some of the most interesting efforts of late find brands using either making a connection directly with consumers via tactics like blogs or providing functionality that better connects consumers to their peers. Lufthansa's MySkyStatus automatically sends flight updates to your peers via Twitter, Facebook and e-mail. Similarly, JetBlue allows consumers to vote on actual plane designs through its Jet Blue Tails program and Southwest Airlines uses Nuts About Southwest as a social hub for its dedicated customers. Similarly, Whole Foods uses its Whole Story to speak to consumers directly about its brand, food recipes as well as an aggregation point for its social presence on Flickr, Facebook and Twitter.

Dopplr

--> Social CRM Platforms: Both the most nascent and promising area for brands this year is in the emerging space of social CRM platforms, where customers rather than just company employees, provide support. Best Buy has made the most visible move here with Twelpforce. Consumers are encouraged to simply tweet tech-related questions to @Twelpforce for support from hundreds of its "Blue Shirts." Another interesting player here is GetSatisfaction, which powers companies like Dopplr, Mint.com, Nike and Microsoft among others. GetSatisfaction builds customer support communities that connects customers with their peers and a brand's employees for help. Integration with Salesforce.com's AppExchange bodes for bigger thing ahead.

These are just a few examples of the kinds of platform moves brand marketers will make in 2010. There will certainly be more -- especially with the rise in mobile and emerging technologies such as "touch" and augmented reality. The big question, however, will be whether brand marketers look to extend or "distribute" across existing social and experiential platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and their ilk, or will they create their own platforms? The smart money should be on both. It's one thing to "fish where the fish are" but quite another to create experiences that will sustain consumers once the hubbub of Super Bowl Sunday has faded way. Creating an always-on platform for consumers is a winning play for the Monday morning after.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Garrick Schmitt is group VP of experience planning at Razorfish and the agency's global lead for user experience. He publishes FEED, Razorfish's annual digital brand experience report and in his spare time flails about on Twitter @gschmitt.