Attract, Train, Retain, and Promote Diverse Talent In Our Industry!

The ADVERTISING Club of NY, has just announced the establishment of The MEDIACTION Future Leaders Diversity Initiative, a first-time program to support and fund directives in the advertising and media business. This ambitious new initiative is a ten-year, multi-million dollar enterprise that’s bringing together some of the biggest advertising, media and global brands such as American Express, AOL, AT&T, Unilever, MSN and Yahoo! to make a long term, measurable impact on diversity, retention and inclusion in the industry. As of today, $3.5 million in media donations have been formally committed as The ADVERTISING Club continues to spread the word about the important initiative.

The goal of the initiative is to attract, train, retain and promote diverse executive talent by funding programs to ensure growth opportunities, infusing directives for on-the-job training, and aiding New York City students wishing to enter the field. In this way, the program is geared to support diverse executives through the life cycle of their careers. The depth and scope of the effort in terms of its fundraising goals, and the prestige of the participating companies, is unique and unlike any other initiative currently in place in our industry.

Operating the same way as The ADVERTISING Club’s MEDIACTION directive, which for 15 successful years has funded scholarships, internships and other programs for students wishing to enter advertising, The MEDIACTION Future Leaders Diversity Initiative will be engaging media companies to provide donated media for purchase by agency clients. To track and measure the success of the program, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is partnering with The ADVERTISING Club to establish key performance indicators (KPI’s) and multi-year targets to monitor clear goals and report on the results to the community at large over a ten-year period.

Industry Leaders Step Up

The organization reports 36 companies are participating so far as either providers or purchasers of media space. (A full list appears below). Implementation of the program will be run by a prestigious Steering Committee, co-chaired by ADVERTISING Club Board of Directors Beth Ann Eason, Senior Vice President/General Manager of Epicurious/ Gourmet Live/Brides.com at Conde Nast, and Carl Fremont, SVP, Global Media Director, Digitas, and consist of high profile members of the involved companies (represented by diversity and HR officers and senior executives). The Committee’s responsibilities will be to make recommendations for original and already-existing diversity programs, and determine how and where the funds will be allocated. These programs will include but are not limited to high school, undergraduate and graduate student outreach, fellowships and grants, retention programs, research and management/workshop training.

“This is the first time that a collaboration of this magnitude is being undertaken to address and commit long term to the issue of diversity in advertising and media,” says Gina Grillo, President of The ADVERTISING Club. “We know that the industry has improved greatly in this area but admittedly there is still a ways to go. Our Board of Directors and our corporate partners felt it was time that a program be established to support the changing demographics of our world and the expanding needs of brand marketers for diverse talent to contribute fresh and insightful points of view. We are tremendously excited to kick off this initiative and find the enthusiasm and support behind it highly encouraging.”

Participating Companies by Category to date

Advertisers:

American Express

AT&T

JetBlue Airways

Unilever

Holding Companies:

Aegis Media (Carat)

Havas

IPG

Omnicom Media Group (OMD, PHD)

Publicis Group (Digitas, MediaVest, Razorfish, Vivaki, Zenith)

WPP’s Group M

Publishing & Media Companies (Print + Digital):

About.com (The New York Times Company)

Parade

American Express Publishing

AOL

The Atlantic

Business Insider

CONTEXTWEB

DailyCandy

Forbes

FoxSports (MSN)

Google

Hearst Magazines

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia

Meredith

Microsoft

Millennial Media

MSNBC

NBCUniversal Digital Properties

Time Inc.

Turner

TV Guide.com

The Wall Street Journal (OOH)

WhitePages.com

Yahoo!

Legal & Accounting Partners:

PricewaterhouseCoopers

Davis & Gilbert LLP