Roy, the 4-Color Separationist
“Roy” was classic. In 2001 he was a VP for Cingular Wireless, one of our clients. One day “Kyle,” my boss, also a VP, goes down to Dallas (or was it ATL?) to present fresh creative work to Roy. When Kyle gets back a few days later, I find him sitting in his office smirking and shaking his head in apparent disbelief.
“Yo, how’d it go?”
“Juss round up the crew,” he says. “We got changes to make.”
I grab our team and we convene in Kyle’s office. While Roy liked the headlines and copy (mine), Kyle notes that his real problem was our new campaign’s visuals. Our concept was simple: “Everyone gets along with Cingular.” Each ad featured people from all walks of life bonding and having a good time. Some ads featured minorities, some had women, others had teens, and so on. We saw it as a simple, warm but effective way to push wireless talk for a then-newly launched wireless brand. But Roy saw things different.
“We have to change this picture,” Kyle points to a poster featuring a black male and a white female. Why? “The client doesn’t want to promote interracial relationships.” Once Kyle clarified that this was a direct quote from the client, the whole room got stoned-cold silent. Then the fun began.
Kyle proceeds to run down every ad and why the pictures need to be changed. The ad with the two guys: Gone. Roy didn’t want to promote homosexuality, even though there was nothing “homo” or “sexual” about the set-up. It was just two young white guys close together laughing. It came from a stock photo book—they could’ve been brothers for all we knew. Next, the ad with the group of black kids talking together: Gone. “We’re not trying to alienate our core audience,” was Roy’s explanation. And the ad with the dark-skinned Mexican guy? “Too ethnic-looking.” (This from a client in Texas.)
We had to change everything. As a joke, one of our art directors (who was Cuban) slugged in a pic of a Mexican guy in a big floppy sombrero-y straw hat hoping that if Roy saw something blatantly stereotypical he might lighten up and let us darken up. But Roy saw it and said, “still too ethnic.” So to stick it to him as much as possible without causing major trouble, they took the same pic and Photoshop’d it until all you could see was the big floppy hat on shoulders. It read like Dr. Seuss Takes a Siesta. Roy’s response: “Perfect. Run with it.” In Roy’s world, white was definitely not “negative space”. (Of course, we never ran that ad.)
Roy was a fool with the balls and the wallet to back it up. If my company had any sense, they’d have told him that not only has society become one big melting pot (or at least one big salad bowl) but also in this increasingly multicultural era his stupidity would ultimately be a hindrance in marketing their brand. But this is The Hustle and remember the hustler’s motto:
It’s strictly business, never personal.
“Yo, how’d it go?”
“Juss round up the crew,” he says. “We got changes to make.”
I grab our team and we convene in Kyle’s office. While Roy liked the headlines and copy (mine), Kyle notes that his real problem was our new campaign’s visuals. Our concept was simple: “Everyone gets along with Cingular.” Each ad featured people from all walks of life bonding and having a good time. Some ads featured minorities, some had women, others had teens, and so on. We saw it as a simple, warm but effective way to push wireless talk for a then-newly launched wireless brand. But Roy saw things different.
Kyle proceeds to run down every ad and why the pictures need to be changed. The ad with the two guys: Gone. Roy didn’t want to promote homosexuality, even though there was nothing “homo” or “sexual” about the set-up. It was just two young white guys close together laughing. It came from a stock photo book—they could’ve been brothers for all we knew. Next, the ad with the group of black kids talking together: Gone. “We’re not trying to alienate our core audience,” was Roy’s explanation. And the ad with the dark-skinned Mexican guy? “Too ethnic-looking.” (This from a client in Texas.)
We had to change everything. As a joke, one of our art directors (who was Cuban) slugged in a pic of a Mexican guy in a big floppy sombrero-y straw hat hoping that if Roy saw something blatantly stereotypical he might lighten up and let us darken up. But Roy saw it and said, “still too ethnic.” So to stick it to him as much as possible without causing major trouble, they took the same pic and Photoshop’d it until all you could see was the big floppy hat on shoulders. It read like Dr. Seuss Takes a Siesta. Roy’s response: “Perfect. Run with it.” In Roy’s world, white was definitely not “negative space”. (Of course, we never ran that ad.)
Roy was a fool with the balls and the wallet to back it up. If my company had any sense, they’d have told him that not only has society become one big melting pot (or at least one big salad bowl) but also in this increasingly multicultural era his stupidity would ultimately be a hindrance in marketing their brand. But this is The Hustle and remember the hustler’s motto:
It’s strictly business, never personal.
