Black newspapers push Kohl's boycott over lack of advertising

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]
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