Meaningful Marketing for Sustainable Corporate Change

By Dennis Ross

In a touchless world, language must touch. Marketing must become mission. Equality must become culture.

American business is now being conducted in a racially aware marketplace. One mistake can shatter brand and share price. How will your company manage this risk? We can help.

Dear American CEO: Stop Talking about Race

By Dennis Ross

The logic is so obvious as to be invisible. Speculating on matters about which you are not well-versed is dangerous. Doing so results in missteps that can take many steps to correct.

The volatility of 2020 seduced many American executives into commenting on race and the reasons for inequity within their ranks. This conversation almost never ends well.

One reason for the “never-ends-wellness” is perspective. Even the most involved CEO does not have enough human touch to fully understand why the janitorial team in his corporate headquarters, proportionately has a greater number of Black Americans in its ranks than he does in his 15,000-member work force. To then conclude there are not enough qualified Black candidates to fill highly skilled and executive positions in a corporation is not only illogical, but flirts with comfort-fueled prejudice.

Faulty perspectives can be realigned. First, you must pro-actively engage with Black professionals in and outside your field of business to gather a sense of where the appropriate candidates are. Second, HR departments must be given a mandate to populate corporate ranks proactively with not simply diversity alone or competence alone, but instead, diverse competence. Third, see the first point.

Racial Transaction vs. Racial Transformation

By Dennis Ross

Professionals of every stripe are exercising an expiring social pass to candidly discuss sensitive matters of race. After the news cycle returns to Reality TV, sports and international affairs, will this unresolved blight go into hiding only to one day return larger, angrier and more harmful than ever before?

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The answer to this question depends on whether one believes the American racial problem is best solved by transaction or transformation.

Transaction views racism as a debt to be paid with pennies on the dollar. Transformation says a new society must be collaboratively formed with no one group having unbalanced influence on the new social design.

If transactional, business will always find the price too high as they seek and hire more Black Americans. Banks will find the price too high as they acknowledge financial racism in capital distribution, and the tragedy in how real property is devalued in Black neighborhoods.

Politics will find the price too high when faced with bringing into par federal and municipal inequities baked so deeply into the system its circulatory veins cannot be fully traced.

But if transformation is the approach, all parties become shareholders in creating what has never been created versus fixing what is pre-existing. In over twenty years of ghostwriting books for authors around the world, I have found one unequivocal truth. Better it is to create a manuscript from scratch, than to rewrite a bad one.

It is time to write a new American story on race and throw the old manuscript away.

Hard Conversation

By Dennis Ross

Racism is a difficult conversation. It is difficult at the water cooler, even more in the boardroom. This is understandable. There are land mines at every turn. Yet, the most destructive land mind of all is silence.

We are living in an age of radical change. Millennials have entered the work force bringing with them a variant view on race. No longer can companies leverage the style, language, music and swag of Black Americans—a marginalized group that generates corporate margins.

Your company must now reflect equality in your ranks of power. A reflection so large it causes every department to measure against its image.

System Error

By Dennis Ross

There once was a man, who after years of trying, won $5 million dollars in his state’s lottery. He won on a Tuesday. Thinking his activities had somehow influenced his winning, this man reverse-engineered all the steps taken on that day. In his mind, he had found a winning system.

The morning he purchased the lottery ticket, he had left home at 8:17 a.m. He grabbed coffee at the local BP gas station. Rita waited on him at the counter. He paid with loose change and upon leaving, said “good morning” to a man in a blue polka dot shirt exiting an ’89 Honda Civic Hatchback.

He then drove five miles east, catching every green light except one, the last one. He arrived at a second BP gas station where he purchased a white Moon Pie with sawdust-colored filling from old Mr. Grimes.

Today, 10 years later, this lottery winner has a trunk full of molded Moon Pies, and a bucket of loose change in his car. He never hit the lottery again.

There are several problems with his “system.” Old Mr. Grimes died. On the site of the first BP gas station is now an apartment complex. He never saw the man in the polka dot shirt again. He could never reproduce what transpired on that winning Tuesday morning. The system had an expiring relevance, just like most systems today.

We live in a world of systems. The system of racial identity, the system of resumés, the system of media. Most of the individuals who created these systems are dead.

Success today will be defined by those who realize this—failure will be defined by those who don’t. Have you noticed how many young people are becoming successful in half the time of their previous generation? This is because they have either ignored the previous system or are oblivious to it.

In this new environment, if your company fails, it is purely a system error. Create a new system.

Who We Are

Story Connex is a culturally informed marketing agency helping companies establish a new relationship with Black consumers. The Black community occupies a unique space. While influencing style and attracting millennials to a brand, the community still bears the historical weight of social inequities. Story Connex creates marketing plans with a double bottom line. To increase the market share of our clients, while forging meaningful partnerships with the Black community until resources and political influence are shared.

Who You Are

Our ideal client is the small, medium or large corporation seeking to talk less, and act more. We serve organizations with a desire to advance a pro-active agenda that represents their commitment to equality in all forms of marketing collateral. From digital marketing to national ad campaigns, we work best with corporate leadership dissatisfied with a passive approach to confronting racism.

What We Do

corporate narrative development
marketing strategy analysis
marketing strategy creation
corporate training
HR consultation

How We Work Together

Story Connex designs content strategy and execution to perfect the long-term marketing plans for your products and services. We deliver granular, creative maps detailing every piece of a potential ad from images and themes to language and the nuances of culture. Whether you seek a fresh set of eyes on a campaign you are preparing to launch or to conduct brainstorming sessions to design a future launch, Story Connex adds the one perspective you can no longer afford to be without.