11 Jun 2012
Posted by AWSC 
(Author’s Note: Just finished reading How To Be Black by Baratunde Thurston. It is an outstanding book. It also sparked this post, which has been been sitting in the back of my mind for a long time. So, thank you Baratunde. And I clearly am playing the role of Christian in this post. Get the book and you’ll know what I’m talking about.)
Friday, March 26, 1999 was a day that could only be called “memorable”.
I was filling in for the production director at KXL AM/FM (conservative talk and adult contemporary) while he was on vacation. Throughout the week, I started getting phone calls from my Portland radio friends saying that they heard we were flipping formats.
“I hear you’re going Classic Rock,” said a close friend.
He couldn’t have been more wrong. And thank goodness he was.
As I made my way into my GM’s office, he was in the throes of doing about a million things a second. I sat down, he looked me in the eyes and said, “At five o’clock, we’re going hip hop (with a heavy dose of R&B), baby. You’ve got a future here. Now go out the back door, don’t talk to anyone and go meet the consultant and new program director downtown.”
From that point on, the FM station was known as Jammin’ 95.5.
For the record, at that point in my life I knew about three hip hop songs – and all of them were by De La Soul. I was back selling Linda Ronstadt songs at three in the morning and now, suddenly, I was heading into something that I had absolutely no idea about.
A little context:
My degree is in International Studies. I interned at the Colorado African Caribbean Trade Office. One of the key things that I learned along the way in college was cultural empathy and understanding. I had been (and still am) extremely interested in other cultures.
As a white, male American, I kind of had a take on what that was like. Fairly predictable and very much “by the book”. I did grow up in an Italian family (mom’s maiden name is Cinalli), and it is an interesting culture. But what really interested me was learning and understanding what makes other cultures so vibrant. And, at the time, I didn’t realize that this change at the radio station was going to be so profound – that my education would build a very important foundation.
At Jammin’, we were African-American, Caucasian, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, married, single, male, female.
That “America-as-a-melting-pot” thing on vibrant display.
It wasn’t just eye-opening – it was a revelation. It was exciting, and there was endless perspective that started to fill up my creative reserves. In fact, because of our diversity, that creativity overflowed.
Not only was the team diverse, but we were starting to work with diverse businesses. I had a front-row seat to a part of Portland (which is pretty white, but becoming much more diverse, thankfully) that I never knew existed. And here I was – the white dude – as the morning show producer and in charge of putting together campaigns for these businesses. Because the creative reservoir was flush (thanks largely to all of our diversity), I found that I had no problem creating content and advertising that worked.
Our staff was incredibly helpful in shepherding my initial ideas.
I would ask questions. They would help me season things up so that they sounded and felt right without being corny. It was that extra step that made us over-the-top successful – and it wouldn’t have happened unless we had that delightful diversity.
The most fun I had, though, was meeting the artists.
I had a blackjack table for a desk (I am half Italian, which might explain that a little bit). And that meant literally dealing with the likes of Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg (RIP), Chingy, Busta Rhymes and Ashanti. I even met Hammer, Ice Cube and Coolio. Those moments were absolutely priceless to me, and I count them as one of my great professional thrills.
When I left in 2004 (to chase money, not going to lie), I thought that this experience would help carry me in my new role as a Creative Director at a new company. I was planning on opening up new territory and taking all of the cultural things that I had learned to this new environment.
Not even close.
Though they are a good company, it was a white culture. I pushed hard. The push back was even harder. I fought. I won very few and lost many. I felt as though I had gone back a few steps, like all of that creativity was wiped away and replaced with boring (albeit successful) work. I just knew that if I had won a few more, that it would have been transformative for the company and the clients.
Looking back with the wisdom created by time and further learnings, I now see a litany of different strategies, tactics, techniques, ideas and games that I could have played across my varying attempts to create the kind of creative change that I so furiously believed in – that I continue to believe in — because of what I gained in a diverse culture.
But while I generally understand what my role is on any team, I’m rarely a fan of manipulative game-playing. So I made the best move for me at the time:
I decided to leave.
Fast forward to today and the Advertising Week Social Club (AWSC).
It feels like Jammin’ all over again. We are a diverse bunch that hasn’t even scratched the surface of what’s possible in this conversation. But it’s not just about diversity of race and backgrounds – it’s about LGBT, women in the business and the myriad global cultures that we hope to continually represent.
It gets me giddy all over again.
The talk of diversity usually doesn’t come from this side of the table. It’s often other cultures talking about the shortcomings of white culture. Part of the reason – as far as I can tell – is that most white people didn’t get the same opportunity that I had. They didn’t live and breathe diverse culture; they didn’t then strive to mold it into a creative and competitive advantage.
They didn’t get the perspective of being “the white dude” like me.
Or they’re not seeking it out. Which is a grave error, in my opinion.
One place of context might be found in this great interview with Jimmy Smith from Ad Age/Creativity back in February. In it, he talks about all kinds of people who he considers heroes and role models.
They are African-American. They are white. And they are everything in between.
My role models in 2000?
Ebro. Dontay. Alexa. Mario. PK. Mark Adams.
They are African-American. They are white. And they are everything in between.
In a world where we so often try to place people, places, and things like ideas into buckets of black and white, it’s that celebration of gray – both proverbial and literal – that almost forces me to use words like “furious” when discussing my own beliefs surrounding diversity as it directly relates to creative change.
Because it’s that exposure to things that are different than the collective “us” that actually forces us to answer a fundamental question whilst seeking creative truth:
Who am I?
I may not know you. But even if you’re one of my closest friends, I can’t answer that question for you.
All I know is:
Without those amazing, wide-reaching cultural experiences – and the people who take the time to teach me what I’m actually learning along the way – I’m not nearly as good as I can be.
And quite simply, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
