Diversity in the Advertising Industry

Recently, a press conference was called by Cyrus Mehri of Mehri & Skalet, a law firm that specializes in civil rights litigation, to announce their Madison Avenue Project. According to Mehri the advertising industry is guilty of “"pervasive racial discrimination" and has been for decades. It a strong accusation and he has some good facts to back it up. However, the whole industry? That, I’m not so sure of. At Off Madison Ave we won’t tolerate discrimination in any form. In fact, all of the people I know in all of the agencies I’m familiar with wouldn’t either. In my 24 years in the business I’ve seen agencies embrace diversity and be ahead of most companies at every turn. This includes racial diversity, alternative lifestyles and background experience. We’re a business of ideas and great ideas come from those people who look at things from a perspective. If it weren’t for embracing diversity in all of its forms we wouldn’t have this industry all at. In fact, this type of thinking and acceptance is at the very heart of all creative people: artists, musicians, poets, actors and even advertising folks. We all applaud Mr. Mehri for wanting to wipe out any prejudice that still exists and I’m sure some still does. But it’s wrong to lump an entire industry into such a generalization.