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Last summer, lots of agencies made promises and pledges regarding diversity in the advertising ecosystem.
Now, some of those agencies are turning those promises into reality, revealing their plans to boost media investment in minority owned businesses.
Yesterday, holding company Dentsu announced a “stand-alone” division that will connect minority-owned businesses (as many as 500, according to The Wall Street Journal), with ad buyers. Dentsu declined to tell Marketing Brew specifically who these media companies are.
Earlier this week, GroupM said it’s asking clients to invest at least 2% of their annual media budgets in Black-owned media. And last week, IPG Mediabrands said it’s “committing to invest a minimum of 5% in Black-owned media across all of its clients in aggregate by 2023,” per Ad Age.
On the brand side, General Motors recently announced plans to allocate 4% of its US ad spending to Black-owned media companies by 2022, climbing to 8% by 2025. This decision came after Byron Allen and several other Black media executives publicly flayed the brand in the press.
- Today, the automaker is hosting an upfront specifically for minority-owned media outlets.
Zoom out: Marketers routinely say they want to reach more diverse audiences with content that actually looks like those audiences. But complaints from minority owned businesses are proof that these promises fall short. These high profile initiatives might be more than just words, but we'll have to see the receipts. — RB