Coming from the entertainment marketing industry, Jessica Lane and Lori Hall, the co-founders of Atlanta-based agency Pop’N Creative, have seen some pretty tone-deaf brand campaign pitches.
In the last decade, the two have worked in-house at Turner, overseeing marketing campaigns for TNT and TBS. Before teaming up for their own agency, they led campaigns for TV One, a cable network that primarily targets Black audiences.
Working for brands, the two recalled insensitive agency pitches that have ranged from key art for a talk show hosted by a Mexican American personality with mariachi bands, sombreros and garden hedges—all reinforcing stereotypical depictions of Mexican Americans—and key art for a candy brand centered on nooses, disregarding the history of nooses and Black people in America.