Tuesday, April 20, 2010

7625: Delayed WTF 4—The Home Depot Fiasco.


Over the past few months, MultiCultClassics has been occupied with real work. As a result, a handful of events occurred without the expected blog commentary. This limited series—Delayed WTF—seeks to make belated amends for the absence of malice.

Based on an Advertising Age story from last month, it appears the Richards Group and The Home Depot teamed up to build a Latino advertising agency. And you thought the home improvement retailer was only good for constructing patios, kitchens and bathrooms.

The Home Depot staged a pitch for its Latino advertising chores, setting up competition between major minority shops—including the incumbent Vidal Partnership. But in the end, the $37 million account went to Richards/Lerma, the Latino division of Home Depot’s White agency. To be fair, Richards/Lerma was not created from scratch during the review. According to its website, the sub-agency has been producing work for a few clients. However, nothing on the Richards/Lerma reel would ever make it onto the Richards Group reel—or the Vidal Partnership reel, for that matter. Additionally, the place doesn’t look very busy, as leader Pete Lerma also runs the Richards Group’s digital agency.

Now, this is hardly the first time a White agency has outmaneuvered established minority shops by introducing an enterprise that would be deemed unqualified under any other circumstances. Omnicom pulled a similar stunt when stealing winning multicultural duties on Nissan. Other White agencies like Modernista don’t even bother cobbling together minority ventures when grabbing assignments typically reserved for cultural specialists.

From just about every angle imaginable, these scenarios suck. Clients seem to be saying the premier multicultural shops are not significantly better than a group of relatively unknown folks occupying segregated cubicles within a White agency. On the flipside, White agencies that struggle to diversify their own hallways apparently have no difficulty finding minorities when they need, well, minorities. But if White ad executives are tasked with hiring minorities to handle general market campaigns, there are zero candidates available, and recruiting focuses on inner-city students.

To properly cover up such scandals, simply visit The Home Depot website right here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

game.set.match!
Damn these white folks got the game down to a science, another reason why suing them via madison avenue project won't work, they & the clients are both in cohootz/working together to screw multicultural agencies and minorities over. Meanwhile u got clueless minorities celebrating minority award shows and diversity events, and "bootcamps" catered to inner city minority students that these same agencies won't even think about hiring once they finish their "advertising education". I cant even imagine sitting in on their little backdoor meetings while they scheme and try to figure out how long they think they can get away with this. But as long as minorities are willing to play the fool and the victim this stuff will go on for decades to come. They have no leverage because they have accepted any and bone these agencies throw their way. They still havent figured out that these agencies and their clients are and have been playing them for decades.

Like seriously these people are the masters of manipulation, and don't think the same people that leave GM agencies they work on the client side too, so they bring those same racist attitudes with them during pitch time.

The ad business is setup that no-matter what a minority does they can't win or make a decent career. If they dont hire you on the GM side,and then if you then decide to open your own shop because you wont win any major business because its considered minority run. So their locking people out at all different angles. The token 1 or 2 that get in can't say anything when grimey stuff like this goes down because their too afraid and too small in number to change the status quo. This is truly a filthy industry, rotten right to the core.