Madison Avenue Project Richard Lapchick study – “White Men Continue to Dominate Advertising Agencies: a Study of the Super Bowl 2011 Ads”

“White Men Continue to Dominate Advertising Agencies: a Study of the Super Bowl 2011 Ads,”

 a study issued by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida. This is its second annual study on the racial and gender makeup of creative directors responsible for the advertising spots aired during the Super Bowl. The report has been compiled at the request of the Madison Avenue Project, a partnership between the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Mehri & Skalet, PLLC.

Once again, there was a lack of diversity represented in the creative directors of the game’s advertisements. While the creative directors makeup again reflected a vast underrepresentation of women and people of color, it also reflected an improvement from last year’s study. The number of advertisements featuring a person of color as creative director went from zero in 2010 to four (representing 7 percent) in 2011. The gender breakdown of creative directors remained the same from last year at 94 percent male, 6 percent female.

Dr. Richard Lapchick, director of TIDES and principal author of the study, said, “This year’s Super Bowl study continues to underline that there is so much room for improvement in the hiring of women and people of color as creative directors in Madison Avenue agencies. It is heartening to see that there has been an increase in the number of people of color who are creative directors in this year’s Super Bowl ads. However, there was no change in the number of women who are creative directors. These ads also show that having a woman or a person of color as the creative director does not guarantee that the content will be free of stereotypes and negative images. Nonetheless, the record shows that it is likely to be an improvement in the content in both racial and gender images if there is a woman or person of color in charge.”

Cyrus Mehri, founding partner of Mehri & Skalet, PLLC, said, “We applaud Dr. Lapchick and his graduate students. By keeping the spotlight on Madison Avenue’s Super Bowl ads, the industry has made a small step from zero black, Latino or Asian creative directors of Super Bowl ads to four in one year. While we are pleased that the industry has picked itself up from the ‘inexorable zero,’ the spotlight on the industry must continue so more progress can be achieved in the years ahead.”

Kim Keenan, general counsel for the NAACP, added, “Despite the overwhelming diversity of Super Bowl viewers, the advertising industry continues to turn a blind eye to both creative and on-camera diversity. The 2011 report illustrates the glacial pace of equal opportunity in advertising.”

The content of the ads represented another area that proved to be quite revealing. In addition to the continuing use of gratuitous sexual content, this year’s bundle of ads managed to depict some women in an antagonistic manner featuring a number of ads portraying men attempting to appease their overbearing girlfriends. There was also a lack of people of color featured as main characters in the advertisements. Of the 66 ads, only eight featured a person of color in the lead role. According to Nielsen demographic data, there were 12.5 million African-American viewers and 10 million Latino viewers of the 2011 Super Bowl, up from 11.2 million and 8.3 million, respectively, in 2010. Also, there were 51.2 million female viewers, up from 48.5 million female viewers in 2010.

In addition, the study flagged the five most offensive ads: Groupon’s “Tibet,” Teleflora’s “Faith Hill,” Sketchers’ “Kim Kardashian,” GoDaddy’s “Danica Patrick” and Pepsi’s “Can Thrower.”

The study was done by Dr. Richard Lapchick and a team of graduate students at the request of the Madison Avenue Project, an initiative of Mehri & Skalet, PLLC, and the NAACP. In 2009, the Madison Avenue Project uncovered a decades-long pattern of racial discrimination in New York City’s major advertising agencies.  

For more information, contact Kelvin Ang at 315-450-1420 or Kelvinangjy@knights.ucf.edu.

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