When Walter Geer looks around, he doesn’t see a lot of people who look like him. As a Black executive creative director at the WPP-owned advertising agency VMLY&R, Geer rarely sees another Black face at his seniority level. In fact, when he started actively looking into just how many Black executive creative directors (ECDs) there are at holding company-owned agencies, he only needed two hands to count them.
So when New York Festivals gave Geer a platform, he immediately knew what he wanted to do. He made some calls and quickly gathered 7 of the 10 or so Black ECDs in New York City—to meet in person as a group for the first time—and have an open, candid conversation about their career path, their day-to-day jobs, and how the advertising industry needs to evolve in its approach to Black voices. The two-hour conversation was filmed and split into three episodes. It’s called Black Madison Ave.
“My thought was to give people access, to allow them to be a fly on the wall,” Geer tells me. “Sitting in on a conversation that, quite frankly, not many people would have access to.”
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