Advertising Is Looking to Diversify

Cathy Lopez has tackled all kinds of odd jobs while working her way through college--at one time flipping burgers at Carl’s Jr.

The UCLA English major’s real goal is to write advertisements. She has had little encouragement--until last week.

That’s when Lopez, 25, who has never worked on an ad campaign, got a jump-start on her career. She began a copywriting internship at the Los Angeles agency Haller Schwarz. “I don’t know when I was struck by the advertising bug,” she said, “but that’s what I want to do.”

For the first time anywhere in the nation, a year-round program of minority internships at top agencies and radio stations is taking place in Los Angeles. The program is long overdue.

Walk into any mainstream agency--particularly in Southern California--and one thing is almost certain to be missing: minorities in top jobs. They hold less than 5% of the skilled jobs at major agencies nationwide and less than 2% of such posts in Southern California’s mainstream agencies, according to top ad executives.

“There has been a general feeling among minorities--particularly minorities of color--that they are not welcome in advertising,” said Jay Chiat, chairman of the giant Venice agency Chiat/Day/Mojo. Chiat spearheaded the local minority internship program with a $100,000 personal donation, which his agency matched.

Its homogeneous nature has long been an embarrassment to an industry that prides itself on forward thinking. In Los Angeles County, where minorities make up nearly 60% of the population, the situation is particularly bad. Chiat concedes that his own agency needs to improve its record. Although minorities represent 23.4% of the staff--compared to 16.2% three years ago--only a fraction are in management or top creative posts.

But over the next 13 weeks, 13 minority students from local colleges and universities will be interns at Los Angeles ad agencies and broadcasting firms. Five are Asian, four black and three Latino. All will work 30 hours per week while continuing their college studies.

The interns are paid $200 per week, half of which is paid by the host agency, the rest by the Minority Advertising Training program sponsored by the Los Angeles Advertising Club, the Western States Advertising Agency Assn. and Chiat.

Each intern is assigned a senior staff member who acts as a mentor and who will assist the intern with eventual job placement. Under current plans, the 13-week internships will continue year-round, with new students placed at agency jobs each quarter.

“It’s a sham for an industry that is supposed to represent the American consumer” to have excluded minorities for so long, said Renee White Frazier, who chairs the WSAAA committee that placed the interns. “We’re all ashamed of the fact that we hadn’t done something sooner.”

Since 1973, the American Assn. of Advertising Agencies has sponsored a summer internship program for minorities. But of the 600 students who have taken part, only a few have climbed near the top of the profession.

Among them is Sheldon J. Levy, who left his post as a production head at the New York agency Saatchi & Saatchi to form his own commercial production company, Campanella Levy Films. “The ad business has become more conservative in recent years,” he said, “so it is harder than ever for minorities to break in.”

The federal government apparently has not kept as close a watch on minority hiring practices in the ad industry as it has in other fields, observers say. Although most ad executives--Chiat included--oppose the government dictating how many minority members agencies must hire, some say closer government scrutiny is the only way that many agencies will improve the diversity of their staffs.

Others, however, point out that some minorities have shunned the advertising field because there are so few role models. “In the black community, a lot of youths make career choices based on what they hear and see around them,” said Beverly Steele, acting director of Minority Advertising Training, which operates out of Chiat/Day. “If they don’t hear from peers or family about career possibilities in advertising, they don’t even consider it.”

The chairman of one of the top minority-owned agencies in Los Angeles says the problem is lack of access. “If I’m a minority student at Cal State Los Angeles, my perceptions of advertising are shaped by who I know,” said J. Melvin Muse, founder of Muse Cordero Chen. “If I don’t know anyone in advertising, I don’t even consider it as a career.”

That’s what the internship program is trying to change. Dorothea Simmons, 22, a student at Santa Monica College, began interning at radio station KROQ last week, working in the promotions department to help assemble listener data.

Simmons says she understands why minorities have been shut out of the advertising mainstream: “People are more comfortable with people who are like themselves. I’m not angry about it, but I feel the need to help change that.”

Ben Shakya, a 25-year-old graphic design major at Pasadena City College, wants to learn art direction--then take the skills back to his native Nepal. “In class, all we learn to do is draw,” said Shakya, an intern at the Phelps Group. “Here I’m learning how the ad business really works.”

Briefly . . .

CBS still has a “handful” of unsold 30-second Super Bowl time slots, but officials insist that all will be sold for $850,000 each before Sunday’s kickoff. . . . The $60-million account for the Amati luxury car division of Mazda is expected to be awarded this week. . . . The status of the 25-person Venice office of Livingston & Keye appears hazy with the sudden loss of its only large client, the California Department of Health Services. . . . Suissa & Associates, the 6-year-old Santa Monica agency, has been renamed Suissa Miller with the addition of Bruce Miller, 37, most recently senior VP at Foote, Cone & Belding/LA. . . . Sacks/Fuller Advertising of Los Angeles has added three clients--including the Miramar Sheraton in Santa Monica--with a total of $4 million in billings. . . . In-N-Out Burger expects to award its $4-million ad business to an L.A. agency by next week. . . . The Ad Club’s Belding Awards dinner will be on the Queen Mary in Long Beach on March 21.