By Kimeko McCoy • November 20, 2024 •
Ivy Liu
Donald Trump made a lot of promises on the campaign trail, including calls to roll back perceived “wokeness” in schools as well as LGBTQ protections. As the picture of Trump’s return to the White House comes into clearer view, multicultural and diverse-owned agencies are grappling with an uncertain future.
Already, these agencies are contending with shrinking diversity, equity and inclusion budgets and societal backlash over diversity efforts. Agency executives aren’t at the point where they’re resigning themselves to a Trump administration 2.0, but a similar scene did play out back in 2016 during Trump’s first presidency. This time around, agency execs said they’re less concerned about the fallout from mounting political polarization and are instead focused on maintaining current spend commitments to keep business afloat.
“It is what it is,” said Latoya Bond, CMO at BGD Media, a multicultural and independently-owned marketing agency. “There’s nothing that we can do about it. We’ve just got to figure out how to work with it for the next four years.”
The writing has been on the wall for some time, some execs said. Calls for DE&I rollbacks have been mounting as many brands have backed away from the commitments made at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 and 2021. For example, Ford Motors, John Deere and Molson Coors are among those who have reversed course on their diversity, equity and inclusion commitments.
Following these brands, Trump, in his bid for the presidency, pledged to roll back protections for transgender students, and, on Monday, Brendan Carr, the president-elect’s pick for chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said the agency’s focus on DE&I will end next year.
Multicultural and diverse-owned agency executives, however, said there’s no sense of impending doom. To keep dollars flowing into their businesses, BGD Media and NIMBUS, both Black-owned marketing agencies, said they’re hoping for two things as they continue to read the tea leaves of another Trump presidency: Brands that are committed to advertising to multicultural audiences maintain their spend and consumers push brands with their dollars by spending with brands who advocate for social justice.
“But if [consumers] don’t [spend more] and [brands] continue to cut [DE&I budgets], there’s nothing we can do about that,” said Dawn Wade, managing partner and chief strategy officer at NIMBUS. “We look at that as the opportunity to go find other brands that do want to do this type of marketing.” Nimbus has produced marketing campaigns for brands including Kentucky Fried Chicken, MassMutual and Jack Daniel’s.
As the year closes out, both BGD and NIMBUS said they’re in the process of negotiating contracts with clients in deals that will mark continuations of partnerships. For example, NIMBUS has worked with KFC since 2020 and the fast food chain has maintained a partnership with NIMBUS since that time, according to Wade. It’s unclear if those commitments are expected to continue or grow in 2025, as contracts have not yet been finalized, per Wade, and KFC did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. (BGD did not offer details regarding 2025 client partnerships in time for publication.)
Still, there seems to be a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts for Omnicom’s RAPP, a global marketing agency. Nicole Simpson, director of DE&I at RAPP North America, said incoming and potential clients have been asking about the agency’s commitment to DE&I and how that shows up in the agency’s work, Simpson said. “That’s going to continue to be a trend regardless of the new administration,” Simpson said.
“My goal for next year is to make sure that we’re bringing more voices to the table and that more people see themselves in the work,” she added.
But given some brands don’t have the same fervor around diversity commitments that was seen at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, some parts of the DE&I playbook may need to be rewritten.
“I don’t want this to be a prediction, necessarily, but we might see practitioners stop talking about DE&I as DE&I,” said Cathy Chan Butler, evp of talent, equity and learning solutions at the 4A’s. Meaning, as opposed to multicultural marketing showing up on budgets as a standalone line item, DE&I could be infused into the data and storytelling within a marketing strategy.
The expectation is that polarization and budget cuts will continue into Trump’s presidency. So to Butler’s point, both BGD Media and NIMBUS are emphasizing their overall marketing capabilities as opposed to focusing on multicultural marketing as their specialization. It’s a strategy that could help win new business, especially if brands become more hesitant to vocalize their DE&I commitments.
“At the end of the day, we’re marketers. If we do our job well, we’ll help you reach the audience you’re trying to reach,” said LaToya Shambo, CEO of BGD Media who works alongside BGD Media’s Bond. “We just need the spend, we need your trust, we need your likability and so that we can show you the result of that.”
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