From...

January 21, 1999
Web posted at: 7:15 p.m. EST (0015 GMT)

by Jacob Ward

(IDG) -- On Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, the Reverend Al Sharpton stood in a ballroom in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria and asked a roomful of advertising people to pray.

It was the inaugural moment of Sharpton's Invitational Summit on Multicultural Media, held to give advertising people from across all media the opportunity to loudly register a complaint: Black, Latino and Asian-oriented media fetch fewer advertising dollars than their white counterparts.

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The summit was focused on advertising as a whole, yet the Internet was on many people's minds: as a catalyst for change, or as a demonstration of how quickly the media can impose its traditional approach on the latest technology.

The Internet's marketing potential - specifically its ability to reach very specific demographics at low cost - has not been adequately tested on minority markets. And if anyone understands how important the Internet could be to attracting minority-focused media dollars, and how easily the Web could evolve to the exclusion of ethnic minorities, it was the men and women in this ballroom. Yet the summit was more of a protest than a seminar. Over and over again, references were made to an explosive internal memo from the Katz Media Group, which urges employees to abandon marketing efforts to African-American audiences.

The summit attracted heavies from both the political and the advertising world, with H. Carl McCall, New York state comptroller, calling the investment of advertising dollars in minority markets "the last phase of the civil rights movement" and Congressman Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) calling the reluctance to cultivate a minority market "discriminatory." The presidents of the Association of National Advertisers, the Association of American Advertising Agencies and the American Advertising Federation joked weakly about their nervousness at working with Sharpton, but then restated their commitment to working according to the summit's recommendations.

"There is a bargain that exists in a market-driven economy," says Lloyd Grant, publisher of the Kip Business Report, a news magazine which chronicles black business. "I spend money with you, and you spend money cultivating me as a market. That deal has not been kept in traditional media [for minority markets]."

It's counterintuitive that this audience is ignored, as the consumer patterns of minority audiences make them an ideal e-commerce and online advertising market. Although they are not as large a market as Caucasians, African Americans are the fastest-growing population on the Web, they're extremely brand loyal, and they're 16 percent more likely to own an American Express gold card than white audiences.

To some observers, the summit was the first time the politics of exclusion were translated into quantifiable measurements, such as market share and spending power, and although the speeches were delivered with optimism and enthusiasm, one got the sense that many were fed up with traditional media.

"A 23-year-old white media planner can't be expected to know what African Americans want," says Earl Graves, president and COO of Black Enterprise magazine. "Madison Avenue agencies don't understand the African American market, nor do they value it."

But the Web could allow advertisers to start over. "The Internet Economy is going to change everything," says Grant. "It represents a new urban dictate: Get information out to the public based on who reciprocates in that trade agreement." Grant says he is worried, however, that big business may close the door. "Already the big guys have moved in. AOL, Netcenter - these companies reach millions of people. I'm not sure they'll be interested in a niche audience."

Some are even more pessimistic. "The Internet has gone mainstream incredibly quickly," says Elinor Tatum, publisher and editor in chief of The Amsterdam News, a century-old black newspaper based in New York. "We're still going to have disparities, because of the gap in access to the Internet between African American households and the rest of the country."

Tom Burrell, chairman and CEO of Burrell Communications Group, one of the country's largest and oldest African American ad agencies, says the Internet will represent broader opportunities for African American business. "It's going to be used the same way traditional media is," says Burrell. But the anonymity of doing business over the Internet means "you can get into it without having to deal with the race thing."

But can the value of a niche site - its attractiveness to black viewers, for instance, based on its distinctive cultural voice - be preserved by large corporations? "Radio stations listened to by blacks are not black-owned, for the most part," says Grant. "Instead, the companies that own them find authentic black voices to cultivate the audience."

Will African Americans and other minorities be as unwelcome on the Internet as they have been in traditional media? And will Sharpton then feel compelled to call another summit a year or two down the line, this time specific to the Web? "I probably will!" he vociferously told those at the summit. "This is not a one-night stand at the Waldorf-Astoria," he continued, "this is a marriage."