Brand Identity

How an innovative non-profit is helping to diversify the local marketing and advertising fields

Created in 2007 by John Olson of local ad firm Olson, The BrandLab is an innovative non-profit organization working to change the largely homogenous workforce of the marketing industry.

Image credit:

Recommended by the Editor

Keeping the Faith

Equal Access

By: Molly Burke |   February 2012   |  From the print edition

Avonna Sanders, like many 16-year-olds, was an apathetic highschool student. Her days at Minneapolis’s South High were filled with classes for which she had little enthusiasm. Then, during her junior year, a friend told her about a new course at South called The BrandLab, which offered an advertising and marketing curriculum, and counted toward an English credit. Desperate for something new, she enrolled.

“Most of the [other] classes didn’t grab my attention. Nothing I learned was something I’d want to do for a career, but marketing did it for me,” she says. Now Sanders is a St. Paul College freshman majoring in marketing, and her success story is one of many to come out of the BrandLab program.

Created in 2007 by John Olson of local ad firm Olson, The BrandLab is an innovative non-profit organization working to change the largely homogenous workforce of the marketing industry.

“[This] industry has had a challenge finding people of color, especially in the Twin Cities,” says Ellen Walthour, The BrandLab’s executive director.  “So, how do you attract creative talent from racially diverse backgrounds to this industry? You need to introduce it early.”

The BrandLab works only with schools where minority students, and those qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches, account for at least 50 percent of the student body. “We are really serious about trying to change the face of this industry,” says Walthour, who has overseen the program’s tremendous growth in its first few years. It’s now in 18 classrooms at nine schools around the Twin Cities, serving around 400 students a year—growth that has caused the organization to outgrow Olson.

Seeing its positive influence on the industry and students, other local agencies stepped in and The BrandLab will now rotate between a new Twin Cities agency each year, continuing to be funded by corporate sponsors such as 3M and Target. This year, Carmichael Lynch plays host. “[This] type of program wasn’t going to work unless it was owned by the entire community,” says Carmichael Lynch CEO Mike Lescarbeau.

Lescarbeau, like Olson, knows the industry needs diversity. “When people sit down at a table that don’t necessarily share the same views or backgrounds, you get more interesting work,” Lescarbeau says. “We want [students] to come out of the program with the understanding that there are a lot more opportunities than they anticipated.”

In the classroom, The BrandLab works with teachers to create a curriculum that encompasses all aspects of marketing, including lessons in branding, target marketing, campaigns and advertisement production. Industry professionals visit multiple times a week to act as mentors. “[The BrandLab] really does what it’s supposed to be doing. It exposes students to the field,” says two-year BrandLab instructor Linda Valentine, a teacher at Robbinsdale’s Highview Alternative Program.

The BrandLab works outside the classroom, too. Last summer it placed 23 interns with 14 agencies and hopes to reach 30 interns by this summer. In addition, it’s given dozens of $1,000 scholarships to deserving students like Sanders and created an alumni program to aid in future job searches.

“This is an industry solution to an industry problem…happening right here in the Twin Cities,” says Walthour.