One important question has not yet been answered about the racist Converse ad pulled over the weekend: What ad agency created this thing?
Big companies like Nike, which owns Converse, typically work with national or global ad agencies to create campaigns like this. Yet none of the news stories about Ku Klux Klan-evoking ad have said a word about who created the offensive piece.
Image from the controversial Converse ad
Black commentators in particular have asked — rightly — who was in the room when this horrific ad image was created and approved. Thus far, Converse has apologized for the ad and taken it down but has not said where it came from.
While Converse rightly should be criticized for approving this ad, they alone are not culpable. Somewhere out there this weekend is an ad agency team shivering in their boots for fear they will be found out as the source. According to multiple trade publications, Converse ads are handled by Widen + Kennedy, a global agency with many top accounts.
Did they create this tree-hanging, Klan-related lynching ad? We don’t yet know.
A lesson in recent history is in order here. Let me take you to Dallas just six years ago when the largest independent advertising agency in the United States came unglued over a racist comment by its founder.
It was October 2020 when during an internal Zoom pitch meeting for a marketing campaign for Motel 6, 87-year-old Stan Richards dismissed a proposed ad concept by calling it “too Black,” adding that it risked alienating Motel 6’s “white supremacist constituents.”
The comment was so offensive — and from an agency’s founder who kept an iron fist on his employees for way too long — that his own staff members leaked news of what he said. As word spread, major companies severed ties with The Richards Group swiftly.
“Were there any Black employees in the room? And if so, were they empowered to speak?”
Motel 6 left. Home Depot left. Keurig left. Dr Pepper left. So did H-E-B, Orkin, Advance Auto Parts and The Salvation Army. Within seven days, the agency lost an estimated 40% of its total revenue.
Although Richards retired and handed the company to a nonprofit foundation and the company changed its name, the damage was done. Several times a week, I drive by the firm’s 18-story former headquarters building in Uptown Dallas and am reminded of the folly that destroyed the man who built that edifice.
Today, the rebranded agency reportedly has income that is one-third to one-fourth of its annual income before the debacle.
That probably explains why we haven’t heard the name of the agency that created the Converse ad.
And yet knowing that matters. And knowing who in the chain of creativity thought this was a good idea matters. Were there any Black employees in the room? And if so, were they empowered to speak?
I’m not saying anyone set out to create a racially offensive ad campaign. I am saying this ad is so obviously offensive it staggers the imagination to understand how it could have made it through the entire creative process — concept, production, review, approval — and no one raised a red flag. Or is it possible someone did raise a red flag and was silenced?
This must remind us that it is not only intentional racism that afflicts America today but also unintentional racism left unchecked. Yes, who’s in the room matters. And so does who is in the room and given a voice to speak. And who in the room has the good sense to see racism for what it is.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global.