Commentary

Rome And Mad Ave.: Neither Built in A Day

Tiffany R. Warren, Arnold Worldwide's vice president, multicultural programs and community outreach, and one of Advertising Age's 2007 Women to Watch, has seen AMC's "Mad Men" and declared it "a decidedly accurate depiction of Madison Avenue in its heyday." This in spite of the fact that the show is set in 1960, and the 32-something Ms. Warren wasn't even born until 1975ish. To support her thesis, she quotes from the decidedly over-the-top promotional copy on AMC's Web site--designed not so much for historical accuracy, but rather to provoke viewership. Ms. Warren then goes on to opine about diversity (or lack thereof) as if she were walking the halls of Sterling Cooper. The subtext of her byliner: Have Things Changed Much Since the '60s?

For one thing, if anyone walked in and announced she was the new Sterling Cooper vice president, multicultural programs and community outreach, those mad men would pour another round of drinks, admire her figure, and show her to a desk behind the potted plants over by the vending machines. In 1960, there was no "multi" parked in front of cultural, and the only community anybody cared about gathered on the 5:45 to play cards, drink, and make racist and sexist jokes.

But if you are picking a time in history to use as a springboard for your own contemporary agenda, why not play in the deep end? Where was multiculturalism in 18th-century England? In 15th-century Germany? In ancient Roman or Greece--in the golden age of reason? Or, for that matter, why wasn't there a social safety net for Caucasians when Genghis Khan or Al Hakem I ruled much of the known world? For them, slavery would have been an improvement over simply being slaughtered village by village.

You can pretty much randomly pick any time and place in history and find a people who were subjugated, downtrodden, denied their human rights, or executed with extraordinary cruelty by folks with a different skin color. Why settle on white ad agency guys in 1960? Because they're on TV?

In Ms. Warren's case, she wants to add to the pressure New York agencies are already under from the New York Commission on Human Rights to get more people of color involved in the ad business. She worries about "upper management [that] used crude but systematic methods to replicate themselves at the highest levels"--and that agencies may nod in agreement to the NYCHR mandate, but not take meaningful action. Fair enough. If activists have learned anything in the past forty years, it is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

But I do think it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that the agency business hasn't made significant progress on multicultural hiring, training and diversity issues in general since 1960--and that if you scratch the surface of an agency president in 2007, you will find the same narrow-minded attitudes as in Sterling Cooper's management. You don't have to live in Darien to know that the world has changed a good deal in 47 years. There is a much more sophisticated understanding of the racial mix of both the marketplace and the talent pool. This may not be happening at the pace that would put a smile on Ms. Warren's face, but you have to celebrate the effort--which from my perspective is sincere and earnest.

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