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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."

Next page | America's endless appetite for racial self-flagellation