Earlier today, I posted a story on the tiny number of African Americans in Westport. Now there is one fewer.
Herb Kemp (Photo/TheRoot.com)
TheRoot.com — a website covering black issues — reports on the death of Westporter Herb Kemp on Tuesday, at age 69. He led quite a life.
And most of us here probably did not even know it.
You know those advertisements that specifically target African-American consumers? The print ads you find in Essence and Black Enterprise, and the commercials that run during Black History Month? The man responsible for many of those you probably remember has passed away.
According to Target Market News, “the black consumer market authority”:
Herb had more than 20 years of experience targeting the African-American consumer market for some of America’s largest Fortune 500 companies including Burger King, General Motors, Kodak, the US Army, Denny’s, Texaco, Anheuser Busch, KFC, Seagram’s, Toys “R” Us, Coors, Hardee’s, Ford Motors, AARP, 7UP, Alberto Culver, and AT&T.
For eight years Kemp served as President of the UniWorld Group, Inc. and 11 years as Executive Vice President at the Chisholm-Mingo Group, Inc. — two of the largest and most respected minority-owned-and-operated advertising agencies targeting the African-American market.
His advertising agency experience also includes senior level management positions at J. Walter Thompson, and Ogilvy & Mather. Prior to transitioning to the agency business, he held executive client-side brand-management positions at Pfizer, General Foods, and Chesebrough-Ponds.
He is survived by his wife Delores, his son Tank and his daughter Courtney.
what a pioneer, it sounds like his work was precursor to BET. i invested in BET during their IPO (that $ paid for grad school+); and i probably had the financial-confidence to invest in BET when my peers declined invites to do so because i had been exposed to a few people in Westport who worked, invested and appeared in those magazines.
Herb was a friend, we met riding the rails back in the early 80’s. There was 5 of us that sat together
on a daily basis. Our only connection was that we worked in NY ,sat together, and shared papers and good conversation.. We talked about family,friends and life in general. We would celebrate each others
Birthdays by going out to lunch in the city. Later we started to get together at each other’s homes with our families. Herb loved his family and spoke often
how proud he was of both Tank and Courtney. He would joke about how Courtney would come out with the things that he had no idea how she had learned . Very much a proud husband and father. The other love of his life was tennis and fitness. After we both stopped riding the rails I would run into Herb at Great Cakes with his tennis pals. During our communting I learned from both Herb and Steve Daniels that being an Africa American was not always easy in Fairfield County . Both Herb and Steve were very involved in giving back in many ways. Good Guys. Westport was very luck that both these men selected Westport as their home. They never gave up helping us to open our minds and hearts. Thank You Herb and Steve.
My prayers and blessings go out to Herb’s family. Herb will be missed.