On Thursday, January 8 at 11 AM, the NAACP and the civil rights law firm of Mehri & Skalet will announce the Madison Avenue Project, an initiative created to address the advertising industry’s alleged “long history of widespread racial discrimination.”
As the first step in the project, they will release a new study (first announced here prior to its completion) conducted by the research firm Bendick and Egan Economic Consultants that is said to confirm initially released results that “prove racial discrimination” within executive ranks in the ad industry pertaining to pay and advancement.
The project is led by Cyrus Mehri, who has won several multi-million dollar discrimination settlements against such corporations as The Coca-Cola Company, Morgan Stanley, and Texaco, Inc., and Angela Ciccolo, Interim General Counsel of the NAACP.
We’re told the study has all sorts of details about bias in pay, hiring, promotions, and work assignments. The study will also make several recommendations to industry leaders aimed at elimination discrimination.
As Mehri said back in September, “It’s not a matter of forming affinity groups among the excluded. What needs fixing isn’t the African-Americans; it’s the white guy running the agency. We want to relentlessly focus on not the excluded groups but the excluding groups, the people who control the power and make the decisions. That’s where people are running into barriers. The leadership has to come from the top.”
Take cover, people. Take cover.
