Bookpleasures.com is pleased to feature veteran advertising executive Mark S. Robinson, author of Pitch Black: The Best Black Ads of the Past 50+ Years.

With 45 years of experience, Mark explains how Black professionals built an industry from the ground up, challenging “Total Market” strategies that often overlook cultural nuance.

In this exclusive interview, Mark discusses the “Golden Age” of the 1970s, the shift in Black identity from assimilation to empowerment, and why today’s data-driven, AI-based marketing often fails to recognize the value of lived experience.

Why do mainstream brands continue to miss the mark when engaging Black audiences? Mark provides a direct analysis of the pioneers who demanded visibility and the ongoing pursuit of authentic representation in advertising.

Norm: What inspired you to write Pitch Black, and what made you feel this was a story that had to be told now? Was there a moment when you realised how much of this history was missing from the broader record?

Mark:  I retired from advertising in the summer of 2023.  And when you retire, you become very nostalgic.  You look back on your career and the work you have done.  I started thinking about what were my favorite ads that I had done and the best ads done by people I admired.  But when I started looking for those ads, I couldn’t find them.  There were no collections, no archives.  And as a marketer, I immediately recognized that there was a huge void here that needed filling.

Norm: You start with the painful history of racist caricatures and exclusion in advertising. Why was it important to begin there? What do readers learn by seeing the industry’s origins so clearly?

Mark:  I think it is important to establish the contrast, and to enable people to see the progression over time, of how Black people are represented in advertising.  We start out as nothing more than other people’s property. Something to be bought and sold.  And then we are used as a prop – a visual gimmick – to help sell products to the general population. It took a long, long time to get to a place where Black people were acknowledged as legitimate customers for the products that companies sell.

Norm: Your own 45 years in advertising clearly shaped this book. How did your personal experience influence the way you told the story? Did writing the book bring back memories of moments that felt especially meaningful or frustrating?

Mark:  Sure.  There have been plenty of times in my career where I was working with people that I like.  People that I respect.  And yet I know – I know – they really don’t get it.  They really don’t understand why their perceptions of Black people, and their approach to marketing to Black people, are so dysfunctional.  My book tries to help people see a little more clearly.

Norm: While pioneers like Sullivan, Graham, and Brandford struggled to sustain Black-owned agencies in the 1940s, Vince Cullers’ 1968 win of the Kent Cigarettes account sparked a “gold rush” for the industry. Against this backdrop, you invited four Black creative directors to curate ads for your book. Why was this panel approach important, and what unique perspectives did they add that you could not have provided alone?

Mark: It would have been very arrogant, and very limiting, if I had chosen all of the ads myself.  Doing that would reflect only my taste and my opinions.  It was important for the book to be more objective and to be more broadly representative.  And it certainly didn’t hurt to bring in some of the best creative minds in the business.

Norm: The book celebrates the best Black ads of the past 50-plus years. How did you decide which ads belonged in the collection? What qualities made an ad stand out to you and your panel of creative directors?

Mark: I think that creativity is a very subjective thing.  And I think that if you focus too much just on creativity, you exclude a lot of other important criteria.  The book tends to focus more on the ads that had a clear impact on society, on the marketplace, on hearts and minds.  We were looking for ads that changed perceptions and changed behavior.  For a marketer, that is the gold standard.  In many cases, I was initially surprised by the choices made by the panel of creative directors.  But the more that I thought about it, the more I saw the wisdom of their selections.

Norm: You write about Black ad professionals having to “perform magic” by creating something from nothing. What does that mean to you personally? How did that reality shape the way Black agencies worked and survived?

Mark:  If you were a white advertising professional and you were starting your own new ad agency, it is very likely that you came from a big Madison Avenue agency and because of your credentials and your relationships, you were able to bring one or two clients with you to your new agency.  The Black ad professionals who were starting their own agencies did not have any of those advantages.  They didn’t have that headstart.  Furthermore, they were fighting against headwinds like the absence of any kind of successful precedent that could inspire confidence in prospective clients.  They couldn’t get business loans or access to capital.  They had to build something from nothing.

Norm: One of the strongest themes in the book is the difference between “man-tanning” and authentic Black representation. Can you explain that distinction? Why do you think brands struggled so long to understand the difference?

Mark:  “Man-tanning” is casting Black actors and Black models in the same ads that you created for your white customers, without any understanding or consideration that your Black customers might have different attitudes or different ways of engaging with your products.  Treating everyone exactly the same might sound like a fair and wholesome approach, but it definitely is not smart marketing.  Think about it.  Would you sell dog food the exact same way to an Iowa family with a 200 acre farm, as you would to a family living in an apartment in New York City?

Norm: The chapter on “Urban” versus “Black” is especially interesting. How did language become a way for mainstream agencies to sidestep direct acknowledgement of Black consumers? Do you see similar coded language being used in advertising today?

Mark:  Mainstream ad agencies will never be willing to admit that minority agencies can do something better than them.  That would be admitting defeat.  That would mean giving respect to agencies that they have never respected.  Consequently, they create language and they create new narratives that reset the paradigm in their favor.  For example, you might hear companies talking about their “Total Market” strategy, meaning that they are talking to everyone and excluding no one.  But that just means that they have incorporated minority casting into a fundamentally white marketing message.  Today, you hear marketers say that Gen Z or Gen Alpha sees the world differently than previous generations, that race does not matter to them.  But this logic completely misses the point, because it has never been about race.  It’s about culture and life experience.

Norm: The early Black-owned agencies faced enormous obstacles. What helped some of them endure when so many didn’t? Were there certain accounts or breakthroughs that opened the door for others?

Mark:  The landscape is littered with Black-owned ad agencies that didn’t last.  But those that survived were not just incredibly talented professionals, they were visionaries.  Because necessity is truly the mother of invention.  These agencies were forced to come up with new ways to successfully market their clients’ products despite smaller budgets and fewer resources.  Things like experiential marketing.  Native marketing.  Integrated marketing.  These agencies invented marketing tactics and strategies that – decades later – mainstream agencies would suddenly claim they had invented.

Norm: In the late 1940s, Pepsi leaders Walter Mack and Edward Boyd pioneered multicultural marketing by courting Black consumers and hiring an all-Black, college-educated sales team despite widespread racism. Pepsi played a major role in recognising Black consumers early on. Why do you see that as such an important turning point, and do you think it changed the industry’s thinking?

Mark:  When it comes to money, whether it is consumer products or Hollywood movies, everyone wants to copy somebody else’s success.  Most people don’t have the courage – or the imagination – to lead.  But they are more than happy to follow.  Pepsi chose to lead, and suddenly everyone else began to follow.

Norm: Black hair and beauty advertising features prominently in your book. As this field evolved—moving from 1950s assimilationist messaging to the 1970s celebration of the Afro—how does it reflect the broader trajectory of Black identity and cultural pride? Did specific campaigns, such as those by George and Joan Johnson’s empire (Ultra Sheen and Afro Sheen) or the sponsorship of Soul Train, particularly capture the spirit of those times? 

Mark: Absolutely.  Johnson Hair Products was perfectly in sync with the zeitgeist of Black America.  In the 1960s, Ultra Sheen was the #1 Black haircare product because it helped Black women style their hair in ways that made it possible to assimilate into mainstream America.  In the 1970s, Afro Sheen was the #1 Black haircare product because it became synonymous with authentic self-expression at the height of the Black Pride and Black-is-beautiful movement.  Afro Sheen and Soul Train were inextricably intertwined.

Norm: You describe the 1970s as a “Golden Age” for Black advertising, bolstered by the rise of agencies like UniWorld and Burrell and the creation of the CEBA Awards. What made that era so uniquely influential, and has the industry ever reached that level since?

Mark: The 1970s brought the emergence of the Black Pride and Black-is-beautiful movements.  It also was the height of the Black Power movement.  This triggered powerful changes in the marketplace.  In the 1960s, Black America wanted to be seen and treated just like the rest of America.  But in the 1970s, Black America no longer wanted to be totally the same.  They wanted to be who they were, in all of the ways that differences matter.  And corporate America and Madison Avenue simply did not know how to do that.  So, they had to bring in the expert professionals who did.  But in the decades since then, Madison Avenue has been pushing back relentlessly.

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and your book?

Mark: MY WEBSITE: Also, here’s a LINK TO A VIDEO TRAILER FOR THE BOOK

Norm: As we end our interview, looking at advertising today, what do you think is still not being fully understood about Black audiences and Black creatives? What would you most like to see brands and agencies do differently going forward?

Mark:  I just read a fascinating article by a colleague of mine, Joycelyn David, about efforts to use AI to conduct multicultural marketing and advertising, and why it is destined to fail.  The article explains that AI processes all of this data, demographics, purchase patterns, survey responses, etc. and formulates strategies for marketing to multicultural consumers.  But data is not insight. Knowledge is not wisdom and purchase patterns are not lived experiences.  No matter how hard corporate America tries to avoid hiring minority marketing professionals, there still is no substitute for what we bring to the table.

Thank you so much for inviting me to have this conversation with you.  It has been a pleasure.  I hope that your readers will pre-order a copy of Pitch Black and pick it up when it comes out on September