Advancing Diversity Honors 2020: Tony Rogers, Sam's Club

In celebration of those accomplishments MediaVillage hosts its annual Advancing Diversity Hall of Honors The ceremony held at CES is an opportunity for the advertising and media community to join hands in solidarity and support for diversity and inclusion The 2020 Advancing Diversity Hall of Honors inductees include Jill Baskin chief marketing officer The Hershey Company J Michael Haynie PhD vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and innovation Institute for Veteran and Military Families Tim Jones chief executive officer Publicis Media Americas Tim McNeal talent development Walt Disney Television Sue Obeidi director Muslim Public Affairs Council The Hollywood Bureau Tony Rogers chief member officer Sam39s Club Tiffany R Warren founder and president ADCOLOR and senior vice president chief diversity officer Omnicom and Shelley Zalis chief executive officer The Female QuotientIn this installment of the podcast series EB Moss head of content strategy for MediaVillage talks with Tony Rogers of Sam39s Club During his 14year tenure with parent company Walmart Rogers has served in several marketing leadership positions including SVP of marketing chief marketing officer of Walmart China and CMO of Walmart US He discusses the company39s commitment to diversity and inclusion DampampI the areas he39s worked on specifically and the contributions those DampampI efforts have had on the company and within the advertising marketing and media industryThe following is an abridged version of the deepdive conversation Listen here to the full interview which includes insight into Walmart39s culture Rogers39 background and how that has influenced his DampampI perspectives and work and the importance of broadening your worldview Also subscribe or listen wherever you get your favorite podcasts Apple Podcasts Stitcher or watch on YouTubeMoss What inspired you to amp8230 participate in diversity initiatives at WalmartRogers One of the things you realize when you work at a giant company like Walmart amp8230 is you have this opportunity not only to do your job and to achieve your financial objectives but you also can leverage the platform that you39ve been given to make a positive change in the world around youWalmart is so big that it39s ingrained into the culture that we play that role We39ve been on a journey for the last 14 years to try and use our scale and the size of our company as a force for good Diversity and inclusion is one of the main areas where we39ve been trying to do thatIn my lifetime I39ve seen the role of corporate America become more and more pronounced in terms of its ability to create changeamp8230One of the first opportunities I ever had to even be exposed to the diversity and inclusion space was about 20 years agoamp8230 at PepsiCo I went to my first diversity class where they had us write down quotthe 10 people that you spend the most time withquotSo everybody wrote down the 10 people and then they started sharing amp8230The 10 people on the white people39s list were white And the African Americans they were all African American and Hispanic and so on The point they were making is if you ever want to broaden your worldview if you ever want to be empathetic you have to have these other people in your life or else you will never understand what they39re going throughMoss You spent a couple of years in China when you were on the Walmart side How do you think that that impacted your efforts towards diversity and inclusionRogers A couple of years over there changed my worldview Being at our office in Shenzhen it was the first time in my life where I had really been in the minorityamp8230 It caused me to be more introspective and to think about what that must feel like back hereamp8230 I don39t think you can replicate those experiences unless you travel a little bitMoss Let39s go back to what you39ve helped institute when it comes to ensuring that Walmart and now Sam39s Club is more diverse and inclusiveRogers There are a few key areas that we39ve been pretty focused on and they all are completely interconnected as you might imagine The first piece is internally amp8230 with our team What I have found over the years is that it39s difficult to authentically do diverse and inclusive marketing if your team is not diverse and inclusiveSo we39ve been diligent about trying to build up the diversity inside our teamsamp8230 The Consortium is one of the many groups we39ve worked with that works really hard to put hightalent African American Hispanic and other diverse folks in front of companiesThe second piece is the media approachamp8230 A team that39s not diverse will not make diverse media choices because people buy what they39re familiar withamp8230 The example I always tell is about a campaign several years ago around layawayamp8230My general market team was building their layaway campaign and completely focused on what I would call mainstream media At the same time we had a Hispanic team who instead of working on layaway was working on a program for our sponsorship of the Latin Grammys It was one of these moments where you realize we have to get things more coordinated because Hispanic audiences are very important for layaway to be a successful programamp8230 And so our media approach really changedEven if you don39t buy into diversity and inclusion from a moral perspective or an emotional perspective it39s just math So much of the growth in the economy comes from diverse groups that if you aren39t marketing to them authentically you will feel it in your resultsThe third area is the creative itself The way we look at it especially on a large iconic brand like Walmart the average American is exposed to thousands and thousands of ad impressions every day every week What we ask ourselves is amp8230 what if those ad impressions were providing a positive portrayal of American lifeCorporate America has such an opportunity to play that role in our society starting with the way they build their departments the way they allocate their money and theamp8230 imagery they put in front of you If you piece it all together it can be pretty powerfulMoss There are things to be concerned about and there are things to be uplifted by What are the two polar opposites that you see nowRogers Well for me obviously the concern is just how polarized our society isamp8230What I39m finding is that amp8230 everybody is regressing to one of the extremes And even in my close circle of friends I feel sometimes that there are certain topics that we can39t bring up So I worry about that for our country and for our economyOne place I see hope is the meeting I just came from There are 50 people in a room two blocks away at AIMM They are passionately working to figure out how they can use their platforms in corporate America to try and be a force of good and a force of bringing people back together instead of pushing them apartI think we should have more hope than any generation has to see real change but it39s not going to be easyClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Advancing Diversity Honors 2020: Tony Rogers, Sam's Club

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