Visionary advertising veteran Carol H. Williams received her due recognition with her induction into the American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Fame on April 25. Williams is the first black female executive to be given this top industry honor.
She will also receive the David Bell Award for Industry Service, recognizing the extraordinary and unique contributions and service to the advertising community and industry as a whole.
Williams is behind some of advertising’s most iconic campaigns. And it’s no secret that she is cemented in advertising history as ‘the turnaround queen,’ given her precise talent to transform a brand from zero to hero.
She is the brainchild of Secret deodorant’s “strong enough for a man but made for a woman” campaign, which catapulted the deodorant to the No. 1 seller on the market at the time, up from No. 9. Once a declining brand for Procter & Gamble, Williams’ turnaround of Secret became one of P&G’s greatest success stories.
Her “Say Hello to Poppin’ Fresh Dough” campaign for Pillsbury nationally reintroduced the now ubiquitous Pillsbury Dough Boy into American homes and further cemented Williams’ words into the American pop culture cannon.
She founded her namesake agency, Carol H. Williams Advertising, in 1986 after working at Leo Burnett Co. in Chicago as the agency’s first black and female vice president and creative director.
Her understanding of African American consumers mixed with her masterful campaign executions and advertising acumen allowed her to confidently move out of the ad capitals of New York and Chicago to Oakland, California, where she continued to shine as the CEO and chief creative officer of the small multicultural, full-service integrated agency.
Since then, her award-winning agency–which boasts a roster of clients that includes the U.S. Army and Bank of America to Cover Girl and General Motors–has produced campaigns that accurately showcase the point of view of people of color. CHWA is the largest female-owned African American agency in the U.S., with satellite offices in Chicago, Detroit, and New York.
BlackEnterprise.com caught up with the ad titan to find out her thoughts on this honor and what has made her stand out and remain a constant in an ever-changing industry. She also dishes on the inspiration behind her famous Secret deodorant slogan, the skills she thinks people of color need to make it in the ad world, and the tremendous buying power of black women.
What was your first reaction when you found out that you will be inducted into the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame?
It impacted me in an unbelievable way. Before I knew it I was filled with emotion. An industry recognizing all of your hard work and your struggle and looking beyond all the obvious things and saying, “yes, we recognize that you are one of the best of the best†is the most unbelievable feeling in the world. It is the same kind of thing as winning the Super Bowl or getting a slam dunk. It is the moment that you recognize that you have been respected for what God has endowed you with. We work all our lives and as a result, the reward we get is mostly a paycheck–this is way beyond.
You’re the first black woman advertising executive and creative to receive this honor. What does this mean to you as a woman of color?
It’s a mix of emotions. Of course, I am blessed among women to be able to open the door but it’s bigger than just opening that door. If women of color don’t come behind me it means nothing. There are few women of color that succeed in advertising than about any other industry. The question is why and what do we need to do better in corporate America? And what are women like myself doing to lay a better path for women of color in corporate America?
What inspired you to go into advertising and to create your own agency?
Initially, I went to school thinking I wanted to be a doctor, somehow my path led me to advertising and on that path, I found that I could do and express all the things I love. I could learn the science and express the art.
Advertising is such a wordy industry, it is a problem-solving agency that’s challenging on all levels and I love solving problems. It allowed me to exercise every aspect of my creativity. I love talking and moving humanity. I love engaging with them, I love showing them things to do, how to dress, how to speak, and interact and I love teaching them how to love. I did that all through the communications which I aired. It is an amazing experience.
How has your agency influenced companies and big brands to reach and engage consumers of color?
I’ve immensely enjoyed putting forth and creating strategic platforms to allow clients to understand the huge immense buying power of the African American market and where the commonalities are and where the differences are. Understanding the culture and the utilization of it because culture surrounds us and infuses us; we live in it and out of it every day in terms of who we are and how we interpret it and what’s important to us. And the impact that black females have overall on this culture has to be recognized and valued.
Read why Carol Williams touts the tremendous buying power of black women, on page 2
Do you see the industry recognizing the buying power of black women?
Some companies do, some companies recognize the impact that African American women have on the marketplace at different degrees. But the big thing is African American women must recognize the impact they have in the marketplace. They must recognize what their buying strength collectively is. They must recognize companies that have been made on the backs of their efforts. If you don’t recognize that, then these companies do whatever they have to do to maintain the status quo. When we recognize what our buying power is and what impact we have on companies, then we can have better conversations with these companies in terms of hiring, how they treat us, and also what they put on the air. When that happens then it’s a better, more controlling situation but it doesn’t happen as individuals, it happens as a collective voice.
We see more multicultural advertising now, what are your thoughts on this; is the industry being more inclusive?
A lot of mass market people believe that the most desirous thing by blacks is to be included in white culture or to co-opt black culture. You see a lot more multicultural advertising but that’s not multicultural advertising, that’s total market advertising. That advertising is absent from any cultural insight, it’s done to say I have a black in this commercial and it ignores the fact that most blacks don’t live that way.
Advertising that takes in cultural insight as a primary motivator for it to exist is one that impacts blacks. And quite often, those insights that you dig deeper into African American culture to get don’t just resonate with African Americans, they resonate across the board.How have you managed to remain a constant and stay in business in spite of changes?
I am a creative. That makes me innovative. I automatically think different. If you use your creativity right, you’re ahead of it. The market is ever changing, ever evolving, and creativity has to do so in order to pursue that excellence. So I don’t necessarily look at myself as a business person first although you have to know business. And I don’t look at myself as a suit first. I always followed my creativity and I don’t necessarily follow the market, the market follows me.
You are often lauded for your skillful ability to blend the business and the creative. What is your secret sauce that allows you to merge these two opposite aspects and attain success doing so?
It’s creativity again. This is really in many ways a learned skill, and creativity is a talent that you have to learn how to take to market and how to use it in the marketplace. Once you have the talent you have the absolute potential. All of us have the talent, we just have to find out what it is and how to apply it.
The Secret campaign: how did you come up with the idea and what are your thoughts on the success of it?
That campaign was an amazing journey for me because I remember when I first walked into the environment of the brainstorming room on that campaign–first of all, it was all men. And their commercials were all these delightful little creatures running around with beautiful little flowy dresses on and never sweating. The women I grew up with were running in the parks and playing double dutch, which was as strenuous as any sport. We played baseball, and we didn’t see those images of us on TV.
I grew up around hard-working women, women who were lugging groceries, lugging babies, lugging laundry, and those women worked hard and sweated. At the end of the day they
would shower and look beautiful for their boyfriends and husbands, and that’s what I wanted to show: women who were hardworking, women that recognized that they needed an efficacious antiperspirant deodorant and that it was as efficacious as any man’s antiperspirant.I wanted to show that it was important for them at the end of the day to be beautiful women while they did all the hard lifting, whether at jobs or home. I portrayed those women through my eyes and thus was born “strong enough for a man but made for a woman.â€
Implied in there was that these women were strong women and if you think about subsequent advertising saying strong is beautiful, the onset of that advertising was that Secret campaign.
Find out Carol Williams’ advice on making it in the ad industry and in corporate America, and what she gets most out of her job, on page 3
Any advice for men and women of color who are in the ad industry or aspiring to be?
- The ad industry is a problem-solving industry. And those problems appear every day, all day long in one form or another. So if you really aren’t challenged by that and in love with that, it’s very tough to make it.
- Have self-awareness, know the importance of self-management and even social awareness. We have a lot of cultural cues that we have to be really aware of because some of them are compatible with corporate life and some of them are not.
- Another key thing is relationship management. You have to have it between your bosses, your management team, your peers and yourself even more so than other jobs.
- Emotional management is key. It’s very, very important to understand what emotional intelligence is. It is even more important than IQ.
What is the one thing you get most out of doing this job?
I love doing what I do, and I think when you love doing what you do, you just do it better than anybody else. The creative process is such an incredible process. I love going inside and being able to create something and then transition it into reality that then has a transformative effect on the people that it impacts.