When I entered the marketing industry back in ’91, there was a fairly common practice known as “taking a flyer”. In attempt to stay connected with an ever-diversifying, ever-fragmenting, and increasingly fickle marketplace ad agencies, promo shops and PR firms frequently hired candidates with non-traditional educations and career paths. I’m talking account execs with more retail and cold-calling experience than branding or agency experience; art directors who’d never laid out a print ad or storyboard before their first agency assignment; media planners and buyers whose only competencies were a mind for math and a love of MTV and magazines; ad copywriters with more poetry, film scripts, and song lyrics in their portfolios than actual ads.

To be honest, more often than not the hirers turned out to be winners. In 17 years I’ve worked with some of the most creative and successful minds in the advertising and marketing worlds. They were smart, creative, intuitive folks with a desire to build brands using their respective gifts. I’ve also worked with people who couldn’t work each day without directions stapled to their foreheads or a note and cab fare from mommy.

What they all had in common was they benefited from industry hiring formulas: Ivy League/Big Ten/Pac-10/ACC/SEC/MBA degree + white skin=Quality Hire. Miami Ad School/Portfolio Center/Creative Circus/VCU grad + attitude + quirky attire + white skin=Great Portfolio. Knows-the-boss/client + white skin=obviously-knows-the-business…

Too many marketers are still in love with the same brand name schools, the same cookie-cutter applicants with the same myopic backgrounds and ideas. Consequently, far too many marketers and clients are unnecessarily saddled with the same stale thinking and failed solutions for their brands and businesses.

We have to destroy these arcane hiring formulas and start drawing from a pool that’s at least as diverse as the marketplaces we’re competing in. We have to hit the HBCUs and junior colleges. We have to seriously take second and third looks at resumes and candidates that don’t “fit” our corporate culture. Thinking beyond clichés can’t be done when you’ve hired nothing but clichés.

Today, some 45% of all African-Americans earning college degrees do so from HBCUs—Historically Black Colleges and Universities. But you’re hard-pressed to find a marketer, advertising agency, PR- or digital firm that recruits from these schools. And with the skyrocketing costs of traditional 4-year universities and grad schools, more students—both minority and white—are choosing 2-year schools and other “less formulaic” educations. And we don’t recruit from these sources, either. These ignored candidates are primary sources of fresh-thinking, and cutting-edge ideas.

In a marketplace that’s more diverse than ever, one in which 1 in 3 consumers is Black, Hispanic, Asian or multi-ethnic and are spending a combined $2.1 trillion annually on consumer brands being “mainstream” is no longer enough to be cool or even relevant. You need flyers.

Flyers are where the innovation’s at. Flyers bring the fresh ideas. Flyers are keying growth. Flyers are diverse. Formulas are the past; flyers are the future.


Save a brand, take a flyer.