Cyrus Mehri, NAACP Scrutinize The Big Game

NEW YORK, NEW YORK  --  On Wednesday, May 5, an expert in sports ethics and diversity, a leading civil rights attorney, and the NAACP will release startling information about who produced the advertisements that were aired during the 2010 Super Bowl.  Of the 52 professionally produced ads by advertising agencies and aired during the Super Bowl this year,  all of the creative directors (100%) were white, 6% of which were women. Not one of the creative directors was Black or Latino.

A qualitative review of the ads found few people of color in lead roles while women were often portrayed in an unfavorable light. The study was done by Dr. Richard Lapchick and a team of graduate students at the request of the Madison Avenue Project, an initiative of Mehri & Skalet, PLLC, and the NAACP. In 2009, the Madison Avenue Project uncovered a decades-long pattern of racial discrimination in New York’s City’s major advertising agencies.

Press Conference to Announce Bias in Ads Aired During the 2010 Super Bowl

When: Wednesday, May 5, 11:00 a.m.
Where: NYC, NAACP New York office, 1095 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 24D
Who:

1. Dr. Richard Lapchick, the Director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport and of the DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program at the University of Central Florida
2. Cyrus Mehri, Partner at Mehri & Skalet, leading civil rights attorney, and co-founder of the Madison Avenue Project
3. Retired State Court Judge Laura Blackburne, General Counsel, NAACP
4. Benjamin Todd Jealous President and CEO, NAACP