Office With a View: BET’s Head of Media Sales Says Diversity Needs to Be a ‘Business Decision’

By Lucas Manfredi

When it comes to reaching the widest audience possible, BET President of Media Sales Louis Carr believes advertisers need to do a better job when it comes to diversity and inclusion.

“In 2020, you had a lot of marketers right after the situation with George Floyd and the Central Park Karen saying ‘We’ve got to do better’ — and some have, but most haven’t,” Carr told TheWrap for this week’s Office With a View. “There is data showing that consumers — especially young consumers and consumers of color — said, ‘We don’t want advertisers to sit on the sidelines anymore.’ Because advertisers ask them every day when they go down these aisles, ‘Choose me, choose me, choose me.’ And now you see a lot of those same brands acting like May 2020 never happened.”