Dentsu in push to aid minority-owned media companies

Advertising holding giant Dentsu, whose media agencies include Carat, iProspect, Dentsu X and 360i, has launched a new initiative it’s calling Economic Empowerment, aimed at driving more advertising dollars to media owned by minorities.

The programme, which includes consulting services, is designed to bring about systemic change in the way media-buying decisions are made, funneling more spending to minority-owned agencies as a growing number of marketers look for ways to reach more ethnically diverse audiences.

The details

• Dentsu says it will keep a record of all minority-owned partners and encourage its clients to reveal how much they spend with them.
• General Motors is one of the first to use the new division, says Dentsu. The carmaker has pledged to increase spending with black-owned media to 4% by 2022 and 8% by 2025 – that’s a lift from 2% this year. GM’s pledge came after pressure from a number of black media executives.
• Black-owned media companies in the US represented under 2% of total ad spending in 2020, according to Nielsen Ad Intel, while black consumers make up 13% of the US population.

Key quote

“There’s a lot of competition to get ad dollars, so people sometimes tend to work with the partners they know. You have to be willing to be educated and open-minded, looking at things that are not part of the familiar universe.” Mark Prince, Senior Vice President and Head of Economic Empowerment at Dentsu.

Sourced from the Wall Street Journal