Employment equity milestone for The Agency

"The Agency has taken the lead in meaningful and true employment equity and empowerment issues. These appointments are significant as they represent appointments not only at development of young talent stages, but more importantly many are at creative director level. These dynamic individuals are bringing tremendous value to our client base by creating advertising and marketing messages suited to South Africa's diverse cultural audiences. For too long these cultural groupings have been ignored or fed poorly executed advertising since the message formulators simply have no understanding of the subtle cultural nuances," says Meirion.

Some of the best advertisements and marketing campaigns to emerge locally have been those that transcend racial and cultural barriers in delivering communication solutions, and The Agency has had no shortage in developing these. Diversity delivers quality, culturally empowered outputs that can be broadly understood and this gives clients more reach for their advertising spend and a superior understanding of the markets in which they operate," he adds.

Meirion adds that he believes the industry's failure to see and experience the many real benefits in bringing black talent into their agencies has been a direct result of the 'old boys club' syndrome still prevalent in advertising circles.

"What has been happening is the rapid appointment of very young, inexperienced black youngsters simply to meet quotas, without any thought given to their development so they can ascend the ranks to positions where they actually hold authority, and make meaningful contributions to our industry and brand owners. They end up as phone jockeys calling for quotes doing menial tasks, leading to one more disillusioned and demoralised youngster in the ad industry. As far as I am concerned it's not a case of 'there is no good talent out there' - but simply that there are too many fat cats who are too intimidated and threatened to develop it," Meirion says.