"BMW Excludes “Urban” Ad Markets, Highlighting Ad Industry’s History of Discrimination Issues"
August 24, 2009
By Jill Marcellus
A leaked e-mail from BMW’s advertising agency sparked outrage among minority broadcasters this month, reviving concerns about discrimination in the advertising world.
Target Market News reports that when ad agency Palisades Media Group asked radio stations in Boston, Houston, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., for proposed pricing for BMW’s Mini Cooper ads, it issued a condition: “no combos or urban formats.”
Palisades CEO Roger Schaffner insisted that the BMW e-mail was “a single, isolated incident” and that they “have taken steps” to prevent it from happening again.
In 2006, the New York City Commission on Human Rights (NYCCHR) found that, with only 2 percent of top advertising executives African-American, “hiring of black workers had barely improved since an inquiry found similar problems 40 years ago.”
Committed to “ending racial discrimination in America’s advertising industry,” the Project addresses issues raised by its January 2009 report, which found that the “Black–White gap averages 38% larger in advertising than in the overall U.S. labor market” and that African-American college graduates earn 20 percent less than their white colleagues in advertising.
Specifically, the report insists, African Americans are “segregated into less powerful, lower-paid positions,” and excluded from influential creative departments, and from agencies focused on “general markets,” as opposed to “ethnic markets.”
