Black newspapers push Kohl's boycott over lack of advertising
Sunday, March 20, 2005 at 10:00AM
TheSpook
After getting Home Depot to advertise
in African-American newspapers, and pressuring Office Depot and
T-Mobile Wireless to do likewise, black newspapers have a new target:
Kohl's Department Stores. Kohl's is the target of a boycott
orchestrated by Kimber, Kimber & Associates, a Fresno, Calif.,
advocacy advertising agency that represents 250 black-owned newspapers
across the country. The purported offense: Kohl's practice of excluding
black newspapers from its print media buys. The Menomonee Falls-based
retail chain channels its print advertising buys mostly to mainstream
media that enable it to reach the largest audiences. A group of black
publishers now calls this practice discriminatory and demands that
Kohl's do like other companies that have been targeted and cough up
millions of dollars in print ad buys. Since late November, the
Milwaukee Courier, The Milwaukee Times and The Milwaukee Community
Journal, Milwaukee's three black-owned weekly newspapers, have been
running full-page ads urging black consumers not to shop at Kohl's as
part of a nationwide effort organized by Kimber. "Our (black)
publishers see this as a civil rights movement for ad dollars and their
survival," says Mark Kimber, chief executive officer of Kimber. This
strong-arm tactic succeeded with Home Depot and Office Depot. Home
Depot has launched a $4.7 million advertising campaign with
African-American newspapers, said Kimber. According to Ethnic
Newswatch, it's the largest such campaign that anybody has done. After
it was charged with discrimination by Kimber, Office Depot now spends
more than $1 million annually on print advertising with black papers. [more]