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He speaks lovingly of his parents, his college adviser, and his mentor -- the late Frank Mingo. But as much as he loves to recall the past, Sam Chisholm's real passion is for the future.
Make no mistake: Sam firmly believes that what went down in the past is an indispensable guide to the future. If you visit the website for The Chisholm-Mingo Group, Sam's agency, you will find a symbol that captures the concept. It looks a little like the moniker for The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, but this one is pronounceable: Sankofa. Translation: Go back to fetch it.
Sam expounds: "We should never forget who we are and what we're all about. That's what makes this culture rich, is our past. So you have to understand where you've been to see the future. You don't live the past, you live the future. I think you have to live that. That's the culture of this organization. You can't do what you've done."
The $80 million in billings agency is also pointing to the future these days with its "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" campaign for Crown Royal. "For African-Americans, beverage alcohol advertising always had to be a black woman wrapped around a black guy." Sam shrugs. "We are proving it doesn't have to be that way."
That things don't have to be the way they are has been Sam's idea for a very long time, indeed. He started out as an accountant, actually. "It made all the sense in the world." He pauses for effect, and then exclaims: "I hated it! It was the worst job I could ever have! I understood it, but I just didn't like it!"
A friend of his worked at an ad agency in New York City. So Sam dropped by one day. It was six in the evening and the action was just starting. Lots of young people around. Sam thought, "Wow, this must be the place to be!" Since he already owned a suit he figured he'd try to become an account executive. He wrote one hundred letters to agencies in the big city. That yielded one response, one interview and no offer. But then he heard that Benton & Bowles was looking for minorities. This was about 1968. 
"They said they wanted to take my skills, my affinity for numbers and my analytical skills, and put me to work in the media department." After Benton & Bowles, Sam enjoyed stints at various agencies as well as seven "incredible" years at Continental Can. "I worked with people who I continue to believe were geniuses," he says. But most of all, he began to see his work as not just advertising, but marketing communications.
It was just that holistic philosophy that Sam Chisholm brought to what was then called The Mingo Group some 20 years ago. The agency had been in business for just two years at that point. Following Frank Mingo's sudden death ten years ago, Sam took charge of the agency and has led it, he says, by continuously changing it -- remembering the past, while heading into the future.
We believe in the concept of cultural fusion. You can go to Venice, Italy, and walk into a store and the guy's listening to rap music. It does take you aback, but cultural fusion has also occurred in America. We talk about culture moving from Harlem to the suburbs, but the reality is that the culture moves from Harlem to the rest of the world. In Japan, they love jazz. Two cultures come together and borrow from each other. You walk the streets of New York and you see Asian kids with dreadlocks! Where did that come from? You stand on the corner right here and walk up the street and see a bunch of black guys standing out there, with Nikes, Pumas, baggy pants -- and you know where they're from? Nigeria! From Nigeria!
As this cultural fusion becomes more and more prevalent throughout the world and the country, it's not that we're going to have this melting pot. I think that people will still need to be talked to on their terms, but they want to be recognized for who they are and what they're all about. Their culture is important to them. Black people's culture is important to them -- much more important than it's ever been. It's a revolution in the black market that says, "hey, I do have a culture. I'm important, and I'm part of it."
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With all of that in mind, there's still going to be a need for the kind of communication that allows me to be spoken to in my terms and in my way. But I honestly believe that we will be put more in a leadership position than our white counterparts because we are the holders of these new cultural adjustments. As the world begins to fuse, these cultures begin to fuse, and we become more culturally dominant in terms of this fusion process, why wouldn't that happen?
When you are marketing to minorities, it isn't always the ad that's going to do it. We try to encourage our clients to define the problem first. They may need an ad, but what is the problem? For Denny's -- the quick serve restaurant chain -- the problem was the Secret Service Agent incident. A group of Secret Service Agents were en route to an event for the President. They had about a two-hour hiatus. It was very early in the morning. It was a group of them -- some white secret service agents and some black secret service agents.
Coincidentally, most of the white guys sat together and the black guys sat together. The white guys got served. The black guys never got served. It was blatant. Out and out blatant. This happened about eight years ago, but it's still top of mind today. What intrigued me about Denny's, when we first started working with them about seven years ago, was that the issue had not been resolved in the minds of our consumer. We talked to a lot of consumers. And we found that consumers fell into three different camps. There were those who said, "I don't care. I love my Denny's. I'm going to go there anyway. I'm going. It didn't happen in my Denny's."
And then we had a group that said, "Well, maybe if they show me that they care and that we are important -- African Americans are important to my business -- maybe I would go back." Then there was a group that said, "absolutely, positively we won't go back." But they tended to be college kids -- people who wanted a cause; so they had a cause. It was a small group, but a very vocal group.
The thing was, Denny's didn't hire us to solve this problem. They hired us to develop advertising to sell the product -- Denny's Grand Slam. We did that, but the problem didn't go away. There was this clear barrier. Consumers kept hitting this barrier.
We knew that unless we solved this problem, we were not going to be able to move forward for Denny's. So we met with the chairman and the president and the advertising people and they agreed that we had to get the African-American consumer over this hurdle. We put together another program that helped us crystallize an idea called "minority crisis prevention." One of the things we found through research was that Denny's had no equity with our consumer in the marketplace. This incident occurred and they had nothing to draw from. They had no relationship with the consumer other than that they sold a good breakfast and dinner.
I like the idea of a blank sheet of paper. I like that challenge.
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Another interesting thing we discovered was that it wasn't necessarily the African-American community that was perpetuating the Secret Service Agent incident; it was the general market. It was the media elite. These articles were appearing in the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. Every time an incident like the Denny's incident occurred, the Denny's incident was mentioned.
We put together a media program -- a media blitz -- to give the press a better sense of the Denny's organization. We held a press conference announcing a new campaign that brought to mind the concept that diversity is being sponsored by Denny's. We're doing some other things that I can't talk about right now that really are designed not necessarily to talk to the African-American community, but to talk to America about the concept of diversity and to re-position Denny's in that regard. It's a big, very smart approach. The needle is moving to the positive side -- ever so slightly -- but it's consistent movement.
So, Denny's is back on track. African-Americans are thinking more positively about the brand than ever. It isn't finished. Denny's knows it; we know it. They are going to have to continue to work at it. They are in it for a long haul. They did a lot of work. They changed their management. They changed their management style. They've done outstanding things. You know, I really like their people. That sounds like something that I should say, but I really do like them. They really speak from the heart. They are very upset about this incident and not having the relationship that they think they should have with African-Americans.
We continue to break the mold when it comes to corporate automotive advertising for General Motors. About four years ago we found out that some divers had discovered a slave ship, the Henrietta Marie, off the coast of Florida. It was the only slave ship that had ever been recovered. It was brought up, with the artifacts and all of that. We went to the curators and then General Motors, and they said, "Yeah, let's try this on for a year." They agreed to sponsor a touring exhibit of the artifacts.
The reason we went to them, and the reason they could sponsor something like this, was that General Motors had equity in the marketplace. There was believability and trust. So to bring this thing that is so sensitive to our marketplace -- black people think about it and chills run up and down their spines. Well, the community is just floored by it. Every museum it goes into, we get record numbers of people going to see it. We do all of the PR, the advertising – all of the pre-stuff and all of the post-stuff.
We also did entry interviews and exit interviews. We asked simple questions. Some of our consumers were in tears, but General Motors' scores went up like crazy. Any company that would do this, that would have the sensitivity to do this, is one that I would want to associate myself with. I feel very, very good about that. It's a very emotional piece, but it's the right thing for the right company.
At one point in time we had a spirit and culture here at the agency that was very much that of a family. Ten years ago, my then-partner, friend and mentor, Frank Mingo, had a massive stroke and died. One day he was here and a week later he was gone. We were at a critical point. There were some things that were not going as well as we would have liked. I was president and COO of the company at that point. I had a critical decision. Now it all rested on me as to whether or not I wanted to continue or just go get a job somewhere.
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I made a decision that I had an obligation to the people who were here. And I had an obligation to the African-American community and the African-American marketing communications community to at least try to continue. Never before in the history of this segment of the industry had a founder died and the agency continued. It had never happened.
It was a struggle. I am very pleased to say that we have stood the test and we are better than ever. I think the culture is one of being extremely optimistic. It is a hard working group of people, very committed to the concept of marketing communications as it relates to the minority marketplace. We are like a little U.N. because we don't necessarily believe that only black people can solve black problems, or that only Hispanic people can solve Hispanic problems.
We believe that if you are good in the fundamentals and you understand your culture you can bring to bear solutions to your problems. But if I am not a part of your problem but I do have good communications skills, I'm often seeing things that you don't see. I see you one way, and you see yourself another way. So that when we get into these meetings and begin to talk about it, often a white art director will say, "No, no, no -- I find that offensive," or "I don't believe in that."
Having this kind of integrated, multicultural group of people, I think has allowed us to do some breakthrough thinking. Our people are very strategic in their approach to the business. The environment is very creative. I'm not thinking of it in the traditional sense of a creative advertising agency. But everybody here has a responsibility of looking at things another way. And that's the creativity that media people have to employ. That's creativity our public relations people have to employ. That's a responsibility of the account group. They look at it another way.
We don't believe that it's finished. We don't believe that multicultural marketing or African-American advertising has really done what it can do. That's the culture, the feeling here. We've got to do more.
At one point in time, there was the general market strategy and then there was the African-American strategy, the Hispanic strategy -- we believe this can't be. There is a single voice that is important. It's the interpretation of the message or that strategy that ultimately is very, very key. That means that Denny's or General Motors has a core strategy that all of its communications should fit under. We believe very, very strongly in that.
Our successes are not predicated upon us wanting to be successful. Our success is predicated on our ability to give what we have to our clients. That's a real nugget because a lot of people can do advertising and do great work. But when you give and give all, it's very spiritual. You're giving it because you believe in it.
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