Thursday, January 27, 2011

8414: The One Club’s Diversity—An Oxymoron.


Advertising Age published another fluff piece involving a minority youth outreach program. The One Club gushed over its Creative Boot Camp in typical press release fashion. Students participating in the program have the chance to win a one-year membership with the elitist organization. Isn’t that about the length of time Julius Dunn was a “member” of The One Club? Plus, the lucky students could land internships at Publicis and Deutsch—bastions of inclusiveness spotlighted by MultiCultClassics this week here and here. Whatever. If the organization really wants to do something breakthrough, it should consider bringing diversity not to the advertising industry, but rather, to The One Club Creative Hall of Fame.

One Club Hosts Boot Camp for N.Y. Students

Agency Creatives Offer Education, Advice at Four-Day Workshop

By Nancy Webster

The One Club continues the momentum of its Creative Boot Camp this week as it hosts nearly 100 students at a four-day workshop at Macaulay Honors College in New York. Open to all City University of New York students, the Creative Boot Camp is designed to blaze a path to the creative side of the ad world for students of multicultural backgrounds. The program is sponsored by Publicis USA and Deutsch and features creative professionals from BBDO, New York; GlobalHue; Draftfcb; Dentsu America; JWT; and Ogilvy & Mather.

The One Club helps educate college students around the country in its series of Creative Boot Camps, such as the one held in Atlanta in November.

The Creative Boot Camp concept launched in the U.S. at Macaulay in January 2010 with the workshop and a social-network site that supports the importance of connecting with peers, mentors and colleagues in the industry. A second Boot Camp took place in Atlanta in November, drawing students from historically black colleges Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College and Spelman College. Future camps are planned for Chicago and Los Angeles along with a return to Atlanta. The One Club has hosted a similar program in China for nearly a decade.

Last year, the One Club expected just a handful of students to sign up. Instead, hundreds from around the country heard the call, says Mary Warlick, CEO, the One Club.

Tiffany Edwards, education & diversity director for the One Club, attributes the growing interest to recruitment efforts, including career fairs, campus presentations and word of mouth/networking with participants and mentors. Best of all, Boot Camp alums have enlisted in the industry: Chanie Kaminker, an intern at Global Hue and marketing intern at Comedy Central; Danny Pacheo, global assistant account exec at Y&R; Chavonne Hodges, education assistant at the One Club; and Carol Tavarez, advertising management intern at Y&R.

The Creative Boot Camp starts the week by grouping the students into teams to develop a project from concept to final presentation under the guidance of industry mentors, including Carlos Fernandez and Paul Fix, creative directors from JWT, and Diana Krulik-Bentzen, group copy supervisor, and Ray Colon, art supervisor, Draftfcb, New York.

Presentations and awards take place today, the final day of the event. Three top teams will be honored, being awarded one-year memberships to the One Club, with the first-place team winning free tickets to the One Show. Deutsch and Publicis Worldwide will give internships to the top students.

2 comments:

TiffanyE said...

Hi! :)

I am the director of the aforementioned diversity program, so I just wanted to add my two cents to the conversation.

I cannot speak for an entire organization, nor am I claiming to do so, but I can speak for myself, and therefore I can tell you that my motivation for running the One Club Creative Boot Camp is 100% in the hopes of not only helping to change the face of the industry, but more importantly, helping to change the individual lives of the students I work with. These are students who have felt trapped in the Business, and English, and other non-creative majors that they have been forced into by well meaning parents with an "I'll only pay for a major I understand" attitude. These are students who are hungry for new opportunities and SO grateful to be exposed to this whole new world of possibilities. These are students who, once aware of these new career options, hustle and study and scrape to get a foot in the door. And I am happy to be the person who has opened that door for them. Yes Publicis and Deutsch (co-sponsors of our latest session) offer the top students internships, but they are also funneled into programs like MAIP, and encouraged to attend industry events that they never knew about and keep in touch with mentors who are always willing to give them advice and keep in touch with me, who shares whatever I can whenever I can. For me, this is not a PR opportunity (although my team did put together a nice release, :D), but rather about offering students an opportunity that I would have KILLED to have when I was in college.

I understand ALL concerns surrounding the lack of diversity in the industry as a whole, the politics surrounding WHO is hired and kept to run such programs, the fact that many things are done just to say "look at me", and the fact that this is a deep seeded issue that dates back to before my birth. But I am just one person, so I am doing what I can to make a tangible change in my world. I am in no way claiming my boot camp is going to fix the entire industry and I know that there is a lot more work to be done outside of this... YES, the creative hall of fame is still very vanilla, but while my work may not change that wall today, who knows what will happen 5 - 10 - 15 years down the line. I am happy to say that I am not alone in my efforts though, many people are working to diversify the industry from many different angles (high school, college, existing professionals, etc.), all knowing that we may not all get to see the effects of our work, but happy and proud and honored to be doing it anyway.

I know Julius Dunn, I know him well. He is a very good friend, and I had the honor of working with him on Adversity for the year it was here at the One Club (I've been at the One Club for 4.5 years). He is an amazing individual who knows that it is about so much more than whether a program name still exists. We were both very sad when he left the One Club, but we also both knew that we are just individuals in the scheme of things, and that if we are serious about making a change we have to put personal feelings aside and keep pushing forward. He is now at the 4A's continuing his diversity efforts through the running of a high school in Brooklyn, and I am doing this Boot Camp. We both still support each other and the work we're doing, and we collaborate whenever possible. So yes, it sucks the way that things worked out, but it has not STOPPED anything. And it won't. Because we both understand what the big picture is.

The diversity issues in this industry are multifaceted and will take many years and many different efforts to correct, but I believe that if we are all willing to do SOMETHING, and are coming from a genuine place, change WILL be made one way or another.

I respect your opinion, and don't dispute all of your comments, but since my program is the focus of this post, I wanted to speak up. :)

Best of luck with everything.

HighJive said...

Ms. Edwards,

Thanks for your comment.

For the record, your commitment and accomplishments are not in question; indeed, you and your team deserve praise and respect for your efforts.

MultiCultClassics’ position on minority youth outreach programs is pretty simple and consistent. That is, these programs are critical—and necessary—tactics in the overall movement toward progress. At the same time, they are a minimal step. And in many ways, these programs are almost clichéd solutions. The One Club needs to do much more. The membership of the organization has the power and influence to accomplish great things, yet they ultimately delegate diversity to people like you. Don’t take that the wrong way. Again, you’re doing your part. The true power players holding Gold Pencils, not so much. You don’t have hiring authority. The power players do. You don’t create the agency environments. The power players do.

A recent Advertising Age story stated the obvious. That is, recruiting minorities is the easy part. Keeping them when the agency environments remain minority-unfriendly—and agency leadership remains culturally clueless—is the real issue.

There are plenty of minority youth outreach programs. Probably too many. But can you name a single program designed to educate the White adult majority?

Thanks again for your comment.