American Advertising needs to be more diverse in order not to discriminate says Carl Jones

During a podcast interview in Dallas, Texas, researcher Carl Jones insists that American Advertising needs to be more diverse  in order not to discriminate. But how?

Is advertising racist? Is the industry of advertising based on a foundation that discriminates against certain groups of people? This is still a very hot topic a year after the killing of George Floyd and it is a global problem that is not limited to the United States. On a recent episode of #LoudAndClear produced by multicultural advertising agency LERMA/ Carl Jones spoke about his PhD research on Decolonising Advertising. Carl is an advertising creative who has worked in Canada, Mexico & Europe and is on a mission to decolonize advertising. The podcast speaks of the power of advertising and the process of bringing ideas to life. This is done by analysing how ad agencies operate today within an ever-evolving ecosystem that fights to bring the story of brands to consumers.

During the podcast Carl notes that “white people lived in a communication media bubble, and black people lived in their bubble that was controlled, it is like a media apartheid. Where I think social media is a democratising media and allows people to broadcast their voice, and cross over to different platforms, or in other words, to different bubbles. What social media has done is give them a platform to be heard”. Carl added, “when I moved to Mexico and went to casting sessions, I could not understand why my clients always selected models that had European features and lighter skin. When the people on the streets of Mexico didn’t look that way. Nobody in advertising could tell me why? That is why I want to decolonize advertising, to take away colonial thinking from the advertising process”

The interview also covers the advertising business model, the technology transformation, and the movement of speaking up and taking action in the US and Mexico markets.

Listen on Spotify or Apple.