ACA releases draft advertising BEE scorecard

The advertising industry is the first industry in the media and communications sector of the so-called 'creative industries' (apart from the broadcast media which are regulated by ICASA; and the exhibitions industry which has already embarked on its transformation journey), to announce its Black Economic Empowerment scorecard to set guidelines for transformation in the industry. The rest, apart from a few proactive companies, are sadly lagging behind as industry progress goes on transformation.

Draft ACA BEE Scorecard

Click to enlarge graph

It must be noted that the scorecard and the ACA's Transformation Charter has been released for comment. The entire industry, including marketing which is in crisis, has until 2006 to meet parliament's expectations of transformation. The ACA includes among its members most of the large advertising agencies and is mandated by the industry as representing the majority of the advertising industry in South Africa.

The draft ACA scorecard is a culmination of a number of things highlighting the ACA's progress in and commitment to transformation over a number of years, its statement read. The ACA has voluntarily been monitoring representivity in human resources since 1998 and proactively launched the ACA Transformation Charter on 23 February 2000. The adoption of the Charter committed the industry to an irrevocable course of transformation and self-regulation by:
1. Only opening membership of the ACA to those who demonstrate their commitment to the letter and spirit of the Charter.
2. Adopting self-imposed representivity and ownership targets which have been monitored annually.

The introduction of the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment Bill made it incumbent upon the ACA to revisit its own targets and milestones, and to develop an ACA Scorecard informed by its current status and where it would like to be in future, bearing in mind the realities of the advertising and communications agency industry.

The draft ACA scorecard is the product of intensive and extensive consultation and workshops amongst its members and employees, including CAFÉ (Communication and Advertising Forum for Empowerment). It has also engaged with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) as to the way forward, and shared the draft scorecard in the spirit of cooperation with broader stakeholders in the marketing and communications industry as represented on the industrywide Monitoring & Steering committee on Transformation.

The ACA said it has voluntarily been monitoring members' progress in key empowerment variables - some for over six years - through our two annual surveys to which they have a 100% response, namely the ACA Empowerment Equity Survey and the ACA Employee Cost to Agency Survey.

The 2004 survey results have just been released and while the journey to meet 40% representivity targets remains slow, the following key trends highlight the progress that has been made over the past years up to 2004, the ACA statement goes on to say: