There are a couple of incredibly talented guys I knew from the NYC scene in the late 80s and 90s that are worth looking into deeper – Desmond Hall is a copywriter/creative director that worked as Spike Lee’s creative partner when the SpikeDDB agency was created by Omnicom way back when. Those guys did some breakthrough work that’s as fresh as ever. Another massive talent is Max Jerome, a killer art director with a portfolio to die for. I think he’s at DirectTV these days. Finally, Charles Hall is another one of those conceptual/copy aces that’s worked everywhere and won every award possible in the advertising universe during that era.

I mention these dudes not because of their color. It’s because of how influential their creative work was to me as I was hustling my first years as an AD at DDB and Ogilvy. If anyone out there is compiling a history, it would be incomplete without mentioning the work these guys did at Ogilvy, Y&R, Fallon, Chiat, DDB, McCann, JWT, TBWA etc in the last days of the dinosaurs.

Keep up the good works.

Jeff Zimm
Group Creative Director
TPN
Dalllas, TX

Hopefully, your efforts will help spark interest in other aspects of black business history. It’s important for all Americans to understand that Mad Men and other entertainment and historical content cannot be complete without an accurate and representative depiction of all Americans in the story. It’s important for black Americans, in particular, to know that we have a history in business that precedes (with all due respect), Oprah, Jay-Z and Magic Johnson, and that appreciating that history is key to finding the inspiration to repeat and build upon it.

Alfred Edmond Jr.
Editor-in-Chief
BlackEnterprise.com