The ad opens with a montage of stunningly beautiful African-American men and women, talking, laughing and cavorting in Edenic settings.

"Imagine," marvels a narrator. "Imagine if you could harness all the creative energy here."

As the music swells and builds, two African-American boys chase butterflies in a golden field. A bookish young scholar in dreadlocks rests his chin in his hand.

"Imagine," breathes the narrator. "Imagine if you could capture all the wisdom."

Cut to a tight close-up of a wise old granny, nodding her head in gratified agreement.

"Imagine if you could feel all the spirit. Imagine if you could touch all the enthusiasm and all the hope."

More shots of folksy shopkeepers, salt-of-the-earth grandparents and children gamboling in fountains. A tiny girl pirouettes in an angel costume, wings outstretched, her plump face transported by joy.

"The world is full of energy," concludes the narrator. "And Texaco is committed to finding it wherever it occurs -- to build a brighter future for all of us."

Yes, you heard right -- Texaco. Having weathered boycotts, lawsuits and a $115 million discrimination settlement in the wake of a top executive's comment about "black jelly beans," the beleaguered oil giant is now keen to demonstrate that it views African-Americans as a precious energy resource. So in January of this year, Texaco hired an African-American advertising agency, the New York-based Chisholm-Mingo Group, to create a campaign that would reposition the company as a citadel of tolerance. In addition to the "Imagine" spot, which depicts upbeat scenes of bourgeois striving, Chisholm-Mingo has also produced an ad called "New Beginnings," in which a cherubic African-American boy guides his kite through the clouds. "New beginnings," croons a narrator. "They can be exciting. And frightening. Here at Texaco, a new beginning is bringing renewed energy to the way we do business."

Now airing nationwide, the ads are meant to "establish the fact that there has been change within the company," says Mark Miller, Texaco's senior director of corporate advertising. "We are reaching out to the African-American community....We are opening a door and extending our hand. We're saying, 'Here's what we're about. Now we'd like to sit down and talk and understand and listen.'"

They're not the only ones. The Denny's restaurant chain, still reeling from its own racial scandal, has also turned to Chisholm-Mingo for deliverance. Five years ago, you'll recall, a group of African-American Secret Service agents seethed as they waited more than an hour for breakfast at Denny's, while their white counterparts, who had arrived around the same time, feasted on seconds and thirds at a table nearby. The incident triggered protests, a cascade of scornful publicity and a massive class-action suit involving thousands of claimants. Though Denny's has since overhauled itself from top to bottom -- replacing its CEO, hiring new minority vendors, setting up role-playing exercises meant to simulate the pain of exclusion -- many African-Americans, it seems, haven't forgiven. "The problem was the perpetuation of Denny's as the icon of discrimination," says Jon Jameson, senior marketing director at the Advantica Restaurant chain, parent company of Denny's. "It was time to do something bold."

So last year Denny's, too, threw itself on the mercy of Chisholm-Mingo. The resulting ad campaign, which aired in selected markets in the spring of last year, shows relaxed African-American diners attended by fawning whites. In one ad, a table full of African-American baseball players pass around a huge trophy, as their white waitress watches raptly. At the end of the ad, one of the players good-naturedly places his own cap on the waitress's head. "Welcome back," emotes a throaty female vocalist. "Welcome back to Denny's."

Account planners at Chisholm-Mingo say the casting was no accident. "[Denny's] did have an African-American campaign, but it wasn't working," explains Pepper Miller, chief strategist on the Denny's account. "It showed a bunch of black people bopping their heads and dancing. To really draw black people to Denny's, to make them feel better about Denny's, we needed to play to the emotions." In focus groups, Miller says, "it became clear that people did not feel Denny's had apologized enough. People were saying, 'We need to see ourselves at Denny's. We need to see white people waiting on us.' So that became one element of the execution. We wanted people to say, 'Well, dang, they are doing a little bit better.'" Miller says early indicators show the plan is working. "People are responding positively," she says. "That's the good news about African-Americans. We are a believing people, and a forgiving people -- as long as a company makes an effort to say, 'We're sorry.'"

It's this sensitivity to the nuances of contrition that endears Chisholm-Mingo to its roster of traumatized clients. The 28-year-old agency, with annual billings of $80 million, has long specialized in advertising and marketing campaigns aimed at black consumers. But these days, as CEOs tie themselves in knots over the fine points of managing diversity, the agency has become known for its brisk sideline in what it calls "minority crisis management."

"The plain truth is that a crisis with regard to minorities can hit anyone, anywhere, any time," Sam Chisholm tells me in a recent interview in his midtown office. A lean, tense, handsome man in his mid-50s, he is clad in a blue open-neck shirt and neatly pressed trousers (casual Friday, he explains). The good news, he adds, is that "there is no crisis we cannot plan for to mitigate the damage."

Image-maker, hand-holder and all-purpose moral prop, he is a calming presence at the side of his absolution-seeking clients as they pass through the stations of the cross. "At first, many of them don't define it as a crisis," he says. "They define it as 'this minority situation.' They think, 'Maybe if I just send some cash over there, it will all go away.'" True healing, Chisholm says, comes only when clients move beyond denial and acknowledge the true horror of their predicament. "They have to realize that they can put a lid on the fire, but the fire will continue to burn," he explains. "I mean, this is not stubbing your toe. This is severing a leg." Even after clients find salvation, joyously proclaiming their embrace of diversity as a way of life, "There's no way [they] can come out of this whole," Chisholm warns. He says he must admonish them against the dangers of premature self-congratulation. "You have folks who pat themselves on the back, saying, 'Hey, I cleaned up the ocean,'" he chuckles. "Well, no. It doesn't work that way. I mean -- you cleaned up the ocean because you screwed it up."

In the annals of mass-marketing history, of course, the spinning of racial iniquity is nothing new. More than 60 years ago, the Quaker Oats Company, owner of the Aunt Jemima flour mills, deduced that their pop-eyed spokesmodel might have a tiny bit of an image problem among American blacks. In 1936, as Marilyn Kern-Foxworthy writes in her illuminating book, "Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" (Greenwood, 1994) the company went so far as to convene focus groups to assess blacks' reaction to the sight of this grinning mammy in head rag, apron and billowing housedress. The response, Kern-Foxworthy writes, was not exactly what Quaker Oats had hoped for. According to notes taken by the presumably unhappy marketing executive, "common and semi-skilled laborers" from the city of Nashville, Tenn., registered the following reactions:

• "Don't like reference to Aunt Jemima's master"

• "Dislike towel around her head"

• "After seeing disgraceful picture of Aunt Jemima I am not interested."

• "I don't like slave picture of log cabin and 'black mammy.'"

• "Slave-time picture arouses my distaste."

The image fared no better among professional African-Americans in Richmond, Va.:

• "I do not care for the picture of Negro woman dressed as this one is."

• "The log cabin and colored woman cause me to lose interest in the brand of pancake flour."

• "I don't like ignorant type shown in illustration."

• "Attempt is made to exploit lowest-type colored character."

While Quaker Oats, over the years, has wisely upgraded Jemima's image, transforming her from a caricature of a black mammy to a savvy Creole cooking instructor -- complete with earrings and gray-streaked bob -- some brand icons have proven sadly impervious to these sort of overhauls. Just ask the former owners of the now-defunct Sambo's restaurant chain. Opened in the '50s, the chain of home-style diners developed a marketing campaign around the then-popular book "Little Black Sambo." By the '70s, of course, the name "Sambo" had come to be viewed as an insult by African-Americans nationwide. Columnist William Raspberry inveighed against the chain in newspaper columns; new franchises were greeted by pickets and protests. The distraught owners took out a series of plaintive ads in Ebony, explaining that back when they founded the company, they never envisioned that "Sambo" would become synonymous with anything but rollicking good fun. But to no avail; the protests continued unabated, and Sambo's restaurants disappeared forever.

These days, the semiotics of ethnic correctness have grown even more complex. Eager to tap the growing market of upscale African-American consumers, well-intentioned companies fall over themselves to design commercials that look like America, only to find that they have inadvertently brought on a corporate crisis. Earlier this year, Just for Feet aroused public wrath with its Super Bowl ad featuring a barefoot black runner who is drugged and tricked into wearing shoes. And in March, executives at Toyota were forced to apologize to Jet readers for an ad it ran on the back cover of that magazine. The ad featured a picture of a Toyota Corolla underneath a headline that read, "Unlike your last BOYFRIEND, it goes to work in the morning." Jet readers responded in a flood of angry letters; Jesse Jackson promptly denounced the ad as "offensive," chastising Toyota for promoting the pernicious stereotype that black men aren't responsible. Facing boycott threats and an uprising from Jet readers, Toyota could only stammer that the ad was also scheduled to run in People and Better Homes and Gardens. Somehow, though, it ended up running only in Jet.

Sam Chisholm can only shake his head in wonderment at these sort of debacles. "That's why you don't want your general-market agency working on your minority communications," he says. Indeed, Chisholm says, his role is not only to help companies recover from such flubs, but to help prevent them before they occur. He does this, he says, through a process called Minority Crisis Management Evaluation Assessment -- a month-long review designed to size up a company's vulnerability to Texaco-style racial fiascos. Chisholm firmly believes that such an audit, which he is currently performing for blue-chip clients Met Life and General Motors, should be part of the arsenal of any farsighted CEO. He pitches his services in the bottom-line language of the boardroom. "This isn't about social justice," he says. "This isn't about equal opportunity, or minority set-asides. This is about how corporations solve problems."

To assist him in these efforts, Chisholm stocks his agency with well-seasoned damage-control specialists who also happen to be African-American. "Clients benefit from Ann-Marie's crisis management experience," the agency's promotional kit brightly notes. "This includes representation of Sabertech, the maintenance facility responsible for the removal of oxygen canisters associated with the crash of ValuJet Flight 592." Oh.

It's easy to see Chisholm's appeal as a guru of reassurance to guilt-plagued moguls across America. With Vernon Jordan-like aplomb, he cloaks the harsh judgments of identity politics in the soothing tones of corporate bonhomie. One moment, he is angrily attributing the recent outbreak of racial scandals to "the demise of affirmative action, the de-emphasis of diversity training ... and corporate America's quest for profits at any cost." The next, he is murmuring that these problems can be eliminated via the "five steps of minority crisis management," and by consulting a giant hydra-headed chart he refers to as the "African-American Word of Mouth Matrix." He is multicultural man as pyramid climber, turning the volatile politics of corporate racial anxiety, with its combustible brew of fear and resentment, into just another upbeat marketing algorithm. He lives in the sweet spot where diversity culture meets brand equity.

As a first step in his crisis-evaluation assessment, Chisholm likes to put senior management through a series of ethno-cultural fire drills. "We usually ask for at least half a day," he explains. "And we give their top people a series of what-ifs. We ask, 'What would happen if someone in senior management was accused of using the N-word to refer to another employee? What would you do?' And we take a day, or a half a day, just to solve that problem." Chisholm notes that, faced with this sort of traumatic prospect, companies sometimes panic, and in their penitential eagerness, go too far. "You'd be surprised how many of our clients come back and say, 'Well, here's our plan for resolution: We would immediately call the NAACP, inform them of the situation and apologize.'" Chisholm chuckles. "That's going a little overboard," he says.

The Chisholm-Mingo group, it should be noted, isn't the only African-American ad agency to combine creative services with impromptu sociopolitical tutelage. These days, it seems, the successful African-American ad executive must position himself not only as a creator of ads and commercials, but as a remedial counselor, diversity trainer, community-outreach specialist and 24-hour minister of contrition. "A term that we often use is 'being sensitive to sensitivities,'" explains Gene Morris of the E. Morris Agency, a Chicago agency whose clients include Mobil and Bell South. "On many occasions, we find ourselves acting as educators." Hired in 1997 to produce a series of ethnically themed ads for Wal-Mart, Morris quickly found his role expanding. "It became clear that we were there to get more African-American shoppers into Wal-Mart stores," he says. "And in that regard, there were some basic things we had to talk to them about. Assumptions they'd made without really thinking them through." The Morris agency quickly sprang into action, suggesting such outreach measures as a $1 million donation to the United Negro College Fund. "It's like money in the community bank," Morris explains. "You can draw on it in times of need ... In the event that something happens, it helps if people in the community know you've been a good corporate citizen."

Meanwhile, there were other details to tidy up. "We try to help them be sensitive to the needs and sensitivities of African-American customers," Morris says. "For instance, [Wal-Mart] likes to put a security guard in their store to protect their shoppers. Well, maybe they should be thinking about the demeanor and position of that security guard. How is he dressed? Can he be a little more user-friendly? Does he have to be standing there like an overseer, in dark glasses, with his arms folded, ready to kill someone? Because African-Americans can be very sensitive to that."

Morris says he believes his agency's attention to detail has paid off. "There have been a couple of incidents where white store managers insulted black customers and accused them of shoplifting," he says. "Now, notice that none of those incidents have reached national proportions. It all goes back to what I said about money in the community bank. They've tried to do things that are sensitive. As a result, African-Americans believe Wal-Mart is better, that it really does care about them ... So these individual instances haven't been a problem for [the retailer]."

To hear Morris tell it, neatening up Wal-Mart around the edges is a far cry from turning his shop into a halfway house for recovering racists. "I personally would be extremely uncomfortable with companies like Denny's and Texaco," he says. "In the past, I have turned down work from clients, because they come off as being just slimy. I mean, I don't care what Denny's says. I'm not going in there."

"It's quite instructive to see Denny's and Texaco spending millions of dollars to say, 'Pretty please, come back,'" agrees Ken Smikle, president of Target Market News, a research firm that monitors African-America consumers, "when prior to these incidents, they were spending next to nothing to say, 'We want your business.'"

Sam Chisholm, for his part, says his critics couldn't be more wrong. The top executives at Denny's and Texaco are "wonderful people," he sighs. "And they are committed. They do not sleep well at night because of this problem. They do not sleep well at all."

Chisholm points out that the very fact that a company would hire an African-American ad agency is seen as an act of talismanic significance. "Having a minority partner sends a strong signal," he says. "What we do is we put our bodies across the tracks. When people say, 'You work for who?' we look them straight in the eye and say, 'Yes, we work for Texaco.' There are those who say this money is blood money. But the reality is, we do it because we believe in it."

As for Texaco, it's in heaven. "They're not just an ad agency," burbles Mark Miller, the company's corporate advertising director. "They're a diversity resource for our entire communications group." As an example of what he is talking about, Miller cites Chisholm-Mingo's suggestion that Texaco sponsor "An Evening of Jazz," presented in conjunction with the Jackie Robinson Foundation and benefiting minority college students. "What Chisholm-Mingo recommended was that Texaco go beyond the standard sponsorship, and play an actual role in the event," Miller explains. "And so instead of the standard selling of tchotchkes, we actually had representatives from the Liberty Baseball era sign autographs and tell stories. We were able to get across corporate needs and goals, form relationships and bond with attendees. It was definitely going beyond anything Texaco had ever done before. From a support standpoint, we're definitely getting the most for our money."

Of course, for companies like Texaco, the road to redemption can prove arduous. "You've got to hand it to Mark," says Chisholm-Mingo's Pepper Miller, who is no relation. "Here's this white guy, going to these black events on behalf of Texaco. I mean, these attendees tend to be sophisticated. They keep up on current events. And they get in his face, and say, 'You people suck.' And Mark has to stand there, and get red-faced, and say, 'Look, I understand why you're pissed.' But then he explains what Texaco has done. He talks, you know, about new beginnings. And, you know, it has to mean something, the fact that we're standing right there at his side."

Denny's, too, may have a long, hard road ahead. After the spots featuring white waitresses and black customers had run for a couple of months, Chisholm-Mingo did some more focus groups to test results. "We wanted to determine whether or not we were moving the needle," says Sam Chisholm. Answer: not by much. There were, it seemed, three mind-sets about Denny's. First, there were the "forgivers" -- blacks who appreciated the fact that Denny's was trying to change its ways. Second, there were the "fence-sitters" -- blacks who weren't sure what they thought. Finally, and most dishearteningly, there were the "hard-core rejecters." "These were the people who said, 'I'm sick of this shit -- I'm not going to forgive them," says Pepper Miller. "The hard-core people were just, like, through."

With Chisholm-Mingo's blessing, the restaurant chain launched an all-out effort to win over the hard-core rejecters. "We also wanted to grab all the 'fence-sitters,' and pull them over to being 'forgivers' and 'tryers,'" Miller explains. So the agency upped the emotional ante, replacing the upbeat welcome-back campaign with a series of controversial spots promoting a national dialogue about race. In one of the spots, a young African-American actor gazes directly into the camera and lectures viewers about the scourge of racism. "Noticing someone's color doesn't make you a racist," he scolds. "Acting like it matters does." The tagline: "Diversity. It's about all of us."

Never mind that race clearly does matter -- as Denny's itself acknowledged when it cast its "welcome back" ads along prescribed racial lines. The ads have received mixed reviews. Several commentators have expressed incredulity that Denny's, which for years seems to have tolerated racism of the most unambiguous kind, would presume to appoint itself the arbiter of the murkier nuances of sensitivity. "Having landed on its ass in the thicket of racial politics, Denny's has decided to stay there," sneered Bob Garfield in Advertising Age, going on to call the spots "lame," "namby-pamby" and "trivial." But Denny's vigorously defends its handiwork. "We did that to start the dialogue, and hopefully be recognized as kind of a change agent in the area of diversity," says Denny's executive Jon Jameson. "I mean, it's not like we've only been grappling with these issues for, like, a year. We've been grappling with them for four or five years, OK? So I think it's fair for us to be able to do that." Indeed, given America's endless appetite for racial self-flagellation, Denny's, unlike Sambo's, may be here to stay.

Of course, not all Chisholm-Mingo's clients have the stomach to follow the agency's prescription for true enlightenment. Several years ago, the Goodyear Corp. came calling, hat in hand. It seemed that the company had run a 30-second ad in Peru, featuring an unfortunate comparison between the strength of its tires and the strength of a black man's lips. The company had already apologized to the NAACP and the Black Chamber of Commerce. But now it faced a particularly difficult challenge. President Clinton was about to go to Akron, Ohio, site of Goodyear's headquarters, for his national town meeting on race. And, in a particularly unhappy bit of timing, Sam Gibara, the chairman and CEO of Goodyear, had already been booked as a keynote speaker. It was time to call Chisholm-Mingo.

"The question was, what do you say?" Chisholm recalled. "Do you make a statement about this [incident], or in any way acknowledge it? Our response was, no, this is not the time, or the forum, or the place." As it turned out, the speech went swimmingly. "We were able to successfully guide him through comments that were not tied in any way to this incident," Chisholm says modestly.

But Chisholm wanted to go further -- much further. "We were prepared to really go about getting an assessment of where they were," he says. "We wanted to make some broad recommendations. How deep was the damage? How deep in the organization did it go? We were prepared to meet with civil rights organizations. Get a sense of their response. Talk to people both internally and externally. And let the word-of-mouth take root."

It never happened. "Did we get a chance to do it? No," says Chisholm. "Because in their minds, you see, the situation had gone away."

The companies who disregard Chisholm's recipe for racial harmony do so, it seems, at their peril.

"In fact," Chisholm tells me, "the situation hasn't gone away. It is never going to go away. Because they haven't put forth an attempt to understand the problem."

At that point, I have my own confession to make. I tell Chisholm that this is the first that I have heard of Goodyear's racial traumas. How, after all, can he be so sure that the rubber lips debacle will join the jelly bean imbroglio in the pantheon of corporate racial infamy? Perhaps, I suggest, the incident has not imprinted itself quite as firmly as he believes upon the public consciousness.

A ghost of a smile flickers across Chisholm's face. "Well," he says, "We're talking about it right now, aren't we?"