Some Of My Bestfriends Are Colored
Words by Sam Rakestraw
A walk to the Monday morning meeting was like making one’s way to the octagon, according to Lowell Thompson. The year was 1978 and he was the artistic director for advertising titan Leo Burnett Inc. One of their clients, Dewar’s Scotch Whiskey, needed a new campaign. They were shooting for authenticity, running with the marketing strategy, “Authentic Brand.” Thompson and the team of copywriters would often clash over creative differences. Thompson being the first and only person of color working there didn’t help his case. For every ad printed, there had to be tons of ideas shot down. “That’s stupid,” one artisitc talent would say. “Try another approach,” another said. Leo Burnett Inc. had a high standard when it came to their clients. Today was no exception.
For the campaign, Thompson fashioned ads centered around two pictures of the same item (cars, jewelry, curios, etc.). However, akin to that puzzle on children’s menus, there are tiny differences as subtle as size, in one of the pictures that sets them apart from the other. Below is a caption inquiring the reader if they could tell which is the authentic item. Finally, at the very bottom of the ad, the whiskey was finally shown. But with the caption, “Dewar’s Scotch Whiskey. For people who can.” Thompson presented it before the creative board and they shot it down. The message of authenticity, they thought, wasn’t present.
Thompson had taken what authenticity meant to him and communicated it directly, an ability he adopted from years of advertising and has been ever-present in his art and journey from “ad-man” to “race-man.”
Today, Lowell Thompson is a prominent Uptown artist, author, and man on a mission.“Some of my Best Friends are Colored” is a coloring book drawn by Thompson full of pictures of real people he’s met. It comes with skin tone crayons. As his latest project, it has been delighting people who love coloring. His new brand, “We’re all Colored,” is quickly approaching its launch date. Everyone needs coloring. “The beauty of the Colored brand is that it’s unlimited,” says Thompson.
The painter, author, and salesman’s goal is to sell that brand and idea to the world, and it all started in Uptown with the idea that racial supremacy isn’t all that great and the world is colored. It’s a simple and literal answer, an “elegant answer.” As Thompson puts it, “everything is essential, nothing is extraneous.” An example would be the Color Wheel outside the Riviera Theatre, a sculpture created by Thompson and recently installed this June. Nothing extraneous or flashy, just a bagel-shaped circle with tiles of color stretching around it like a rotating palette. All around town are banners with white lettering, “Proud” and “Uptown” with some of the same colors from the wheel in the foreground.
Thompson’s coloring book is an ongoing answer, selling the idea of a colored human species in book and art form. Books are a medium that Thompson is familiar with. In 2012, Thompson worked on the Images of America series entry “African Americans in Chicago,” a perennial Chicagio seller that’s been on the shelves of booksellers in the area throughout the years, sold even in the gift shop of the Field Museum, unbeknownst to Thompson.
“Branding Humans” is Thompson’s 2018 answer to how racism may have gotten here in the first place, and it’s just how every idea finds itself in the populace. It was advertised, branded, and sold. Thompson had been in advertising for 35 years and began to notice some correlations between the way agencies brand their products in the same way that a person would be branded white or black. “Marketers believe our minds only have room for a few brands (Share of Mind) in any product category—Coke or Pepsi, Apple or Microsoft. Branders in America divided humans into “black” or “white.” All other brands are gradations of these extremes,” he wrote in the book.
Thompson uses his advertising expertise to explore racism in his other book “The Invisible Man in the Grey Flannel Suit,” a play on Sloan Wilson’s “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit” and Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” Two stories, with the themes of business and racism. Thompson does judge books by their covers. In fact, that’s how they are sold.
“When you buy the book, you buy the cover,” he said. “The cover is a promise of what’s inside and the rest is finding out if it will live up to that promise.” The coloring book cover is a drawing of Thompson holding the title card surrounded by people, his friends, all of whom are colored by the reader and not branding.
Lowell Thompson approaches this issue like a practical problem solver and salesman by stating the problem, providing an answer, and selling it. The issue of human branding was talked about in his book of the same name, “Branding Humans.” Afterward, Thompson gave his own answer with the coloring book, “Some of My Best Friends are Colored.” Now, it’s all up to the consumer to buy into the “We’re all Colored” brand.
