The Downside of Supplier Diversity at McDonald’s

There’s a reason that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and there are many examples of this principle playing out in business today. Many of them boil down to two specific scenarios:

-An idea is conceived of by one person, but handed over to another for execution, or

-An idea that works when led as a one-off, but which does not scale well at all.

One of those could easily be at play in a case of supplier diversity efforts gone wrong… in this case, at McDonald’s. They segment a portion of their $1.6 Billion annual advertising budget for black-owned firms, but Byron Allen, owner of Allen Media Group, doesn’t want an opportunity in this segment – he wants McDonald’s commercials to run on his stations nationwide.

In this week’s episode of Dial P for Procurement, host Kelly Barner covers:

• The federal court case pending against McDonalds, brought by Allen Media Group, which owns the Weather Channel as well as 36 ABC, CBS, and Fox television stations
• The good intentions at the heart of the McDonald’s supplier diversity program which may be causing some problems for them now
• What companies and supplier diversity program leaders can learn from this story