6 **MORE** Immediate Actions Ad Agencies & Brands Can Take In Support Of Black Lives and Black Business Right Now

Last week I shared 6 Immediate Actions Ad Agencies & Brands Can Take In Support Of Black Lives and Black Business Right Now. Some actions would take a few clicks, some $100/month, and others an hour of your time. It is my hope you have begun to implement these, or similar, along with instituting long term action plans in your business. Here are 6 more.

The below are heavily focused on working with and investing in Black Owned businesses. In the feedback I received from the first article, companies like TONL and CreateHer were new information. As diversity and inclusion efforts are remodeled and white awareness is at an all time high, engaging Black businesses moves the needle forward by supporting both ideas and opportunities in the immediate but (hopefully) for the long term.

It is a movement not a moment. Actions prove answers. Keep Going.

1. Get "Here For It"

Take your Cannes 2020 kitty focused on rosé in overly priced hotel rooms and dedicate it to the next AdColor conference, "Here For It."

AdColor is the premier inclusion group for creative industries. With a goal for companies to embrace diversity and inclusion by celebrating those who want to stand out and be different while recognizing diverse different people not as quotas, but as assets who bring new, fresh and brilliant ideas to every business. AdColor represents a POV agencies and brands need to move forward with together.

This year's AdColor conference is titled "Here For It" and has gone Covid-virtual come September 2020 - which means your agency can still get engaged. Focused on showing up, being present, continuing the fight and striving for progress, you need only get your people there and put your money behind it. Pro Tip: keep it on the books for 2021 .

2. Yield Your Time

We all could use some efficiencies with our time management, and the back and forth emails around meeting scheduling is a crown jewel of time wasting. Enter, Tope Awotoma who founded Calendly to take away that headache and provide a solution to make booking meetings even easier. Calendly is the fastest growing company in scheduling automation with YOY growth of 100%. Maxing out at a pro cost of $12/month (after a 14 day trial) use it for out of company meetings, personal and otherwise. They are integrated with Zoom at no cost through September to keep everyone connected through Covid.

Using Calendly will also easily get you an extra 5 minutes in your day. Imagine how many calls to City Council Members you could make, petitions you could sign, and letters you could send with an extra 5 minutes a day. #JusticeForBreonna

3. Audit Your Books

Creatives in advertising, for the most part, work in moveable tides. From freelance working, to role hopping, ADs, copywriters, and CDs are on the move, putting creative services groups and agency recruiters in an always on position. You've got your database, folder, bookmarks; now is the time to give those resumes, portfolios, and books a good audit to insure you have on offer a diverse range of talent for future projects. Books inclusive of voices across the spectrum with particular focus on Black voices.

Need help: For directing talent and beyond reach out to non-profit Free The Work which offers an easily searchable database for most creative and production roles - they also highlighted a slew of Black Creatives in their May Newsletter. Submit open roles to newly created #BlkCreatives for $35, or simply post a call for portfolios from #BlackCreatives on social media. Tools are out there. Use them.

4. Data Transparency - Streamed

At a time when according to Dentsu's Media Market Place (4/8/20), Americans streamed 85% more minutes of video in March 2020 compared to March 2019, and the average person streamed 36% more minutes Mid-March to April. Streaming is the pandemic/recession media winner (as radio was in the Great Depression). Which means we can expect branded content in this space to grow in follow-up. As that happens agencies will need trusted data partners in the space, like Streamlytics, to help tell the stories and look at the audience responsibly.

Yes, there's a lot of work to be done round bias in our data and AI (this is long game work.) What can be done today is to find more trusted, transparent sources for your data. With Streamlytics you can do just that. Founded by Angela Benton and with it's Angel round led by Issa Rae in 2019, it has been up and up for Streamlytics since. Reach out for a demo.

5. Divest In Police

In line with BLDPWR's demand to Hollywood released Wednesday, it is immediately time for advertising to follow suit. Exactly like Hollywood, ad agencies and brands can divest from the police by taking the same simple actions - leveraging their financial privilege in this economy, and requiring change. It's important you read from BLDPWR's full letter and list of demands on BLDPWR.com - Hollywood 4 Black Lives. With each production and creative work you have the power.

6. Buy Black Media

The simple action here is that with more and more brands pulling their July Facebook spends, brands and agencies can easily reallocate those dollars to Black owned media properties. Do this now. Some suggestions: Blavity, AFROPUNK, Travel Noire, iOne Digital's Brands.

The complex action here is it is time brands and agencies address their blocklists, and "brand safety" practices. These are archaic, unethical practices that exclude significant members of the population who don't fit into stereotypically white cis male/female personas. For more, you can read Will Cady's piece We Need To Talk About The Problem With 'Whitelisting' where he not only outlines the problem but guideposts to solutions for more. What we need to be cognizant of is that a content distribution play via it's very nature of practicing brand safety and blocklists is likely in a racist, homophobic, xenophobic practice.

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I've outlined 12 immediate actions you can take, now it's your turn. I will be aggregating a list of further Immediate Actions Ad Agencies & Brands Can Take In Support Of Black Life and Black Business here: Submit Yours Here. I will be posting an updated full list of vetted solutions in the coming week/s.

Together we can keep the momentum of the movement in our work, our offices, with our consumers, and in all our actions to make sure Black Life Matters in America because Nothing matters until Black Life Matters.