Caroline R. Jones Papers

Caroline Robinson Jones (1942-2001) was a highly regarded American advertising and public relations executive. Her work recognized the rising economic power and cultural influence of the black middle class after World War II and contributed to a fundamental shift in American advertising, as mainstream national advertisers sought to reach a consumer market that was increasingly recognized as both economically significant and racially and ethnically diverse. The corporate and public service advertising she created to reach minority audiences stands as a record of our nation's continuing dialogue with race and ethnicity, viewed through the dual lenses of consumption and mass culture. Caroline Marie Robinson was born in Benton Harbor, Michigan, the third of nine children. In 1963, she graduated from the University of Michigan, where she was active in Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, with a bachelor's degree in English and a minor in Science. She married Edward Jones, a loan officer with the Small Business Administration in 1965, and had a son, Anthony. After college, she was hired by the New York offices of J. Walter Thompson, one of the country's oldest, largest and most respected advertising agencies. Like most women hired by the agency at that time, she began working in the secretarial pool, but she was invited to attend the agency's copywriting school, becoming the first African-American person ever to do so. She remained at Thompson for five years as a junior copywriter on accounts including Ponds, Chun King, Scott Paper, and the American Gas Association. In 1969, she joined Zebra Associates as Vice President and Creative Director. Zebra, a black owned agency with a racially integrated staff, was among a pioneer group of advertising agencies that specialized in tailoring national ad campaigns to the needs and desires of an urban, black consumer market. She was named one of the Foremost Women in Communications in 1970, and won her first advertising awards in 1971, including one for work on the Southern Voter Registration Drive. In 1972, Jones went to work as Senior Copywriter at Kenyon & Eckhardt. She later became a partner and Creative Director. While at K&E, she met Kelvin Wall, who recruited her as a senior consultant at Kabon Consulting, another black-owned agency with which she was associated from about 1970 until about 1974. From there she went on to co-found the Black Creative Group. In 1975, she achieved another first by becoming the first woman Vice President of a major agency, Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn (BBDO). Jones remained at BBDO until 1977, when she joined Frank Mingo and Richard Guilmenot as principals in a new agency affiliated with Interpublic. That arrangement offered the firm the financial backing of an international advertising and marketing communications giant. Mingo-Jones specialized in tailoring general market campaigns to a black audience, in creating new campaigns for the black market, and, in some cases, repositioning the product or introducing new products to increase market share. Jones played minor roles advising the Carter-Mondale presidential campaign in 1984 (box 31/folder 13), the Mondale-Ferraro campaign (box 34/folder4), and the David Dinkins New York City mayoral campaigns. She also advised the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign and the PLP party of the Bahamas as part of her public relations work for the country (see,for example, notebooks for September,1984, box 79). In 1986 Caroline Jones left Mingo-Jones to form her own agency, Caroline Jones Advertising, which she restructured in 1994 as Caroline Jones, Inc. and operated until her death in 2001. Her major clients included the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, McDonalds, and Anheuser-Busch. Jones also created public service advertising for the United Negro College Fund, Healthy Start (pre-natal care), and the Partnership for a Drug Free America. Caroline Jones received many awards including "Woman of the Year" by the Advertising Women of New York in 1990. She served on the boards of the Advertising Council, Long Island University, the Women's Bank of New York, and on the New York State Banking Board. Beginning in he late 1980s, she produced and moderated "Focus on the Black Woman" for WNYC Radio and hosted "In the Black: Keys to Success" for WOR-TV. Sources Stuart Elliott, "Caroline Jones, 59, Founder of Black-Run Ad Companies," The New York Times, July 8, 2001. Judy Foster Davis, "Caroline Robinson Jones: Advertising Trailblazer, Entrepreneur and Tragic Heroine," in Eric H. Shaw, ed., The romance of marketing history : proceedings of the 11th Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing (CHARM), Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, May 15-18, 2003 Boca Raton, FL : Association for Historical Research in Marketing, 2003. 210-219. Judy Foster Davis, "'Aunt Jemima is Alive and Cookin'?' An Advertiser's Dilemma of Competing Collection Memories," Journal of Macroeconomics, Vol. 27, No. 1. March 2007 p. 25-37