15500: The Richards Group Talks About Change In Black & White.

 

Advertising Age asked, “How Has The Richards Group Changed In The Last 10 Months?” Does anyone really care? A better question would be, “How Has Stan Richards Changed In The Last 10 Months?”

 

How Has The Richards Group Changed In The Last 10 Months?

 

CEO Glenn Dady speaks out to Ad Age for the first time since the shop’s founder departed

 

By Brian Bonilla

 

It’s been nearly a year since The Richards Group was shaken up by a racist remark its founder, Stan Richards, made during an internal meeting in October. Since then Richards departed, but he left behind a mess for the agency to clean up. Glenn Dady, who worked under Stan Richards for 40 years, took over as CEO last year. According to Dady, 15% of the agency’s staff and 40% of the agency’s revenue were lost due to the incident and another 15% of employees departed due to the pandemic.

 

Now the agency is Stan-less and nonprofit-owned, but what has actually changed?

 

“I’m such a different kind of leader than Stan was,” Dady says. “He’d been here forever. I’d been with him for 40 years, but we’re different people. I tend to be extremely collaborative and I want different opinions. We spent the first six months [since Richards left] just listening to the people in this agency, trying to figure out where we wanted to go, then the last three months have been about putting all of those thoughts together.”

 

So far Dady has focused on recreating the agency’s internal team structure into six different divisions that include innovation, growth, strategy, creativity, a collaboration group, and people led by Nikki Wilson, its first-ever chief culture and talent officer, hired in April. Dady also helped create its first-ever HR department.

 

The agency also implemented a number of programs and groups such as a leadership council made up of young rising talent in the agency that meets with the leadership team twice a month and a Rebuild With Us program that allows employees to send anonymous feedback to agency leaders.

 

“[Before] It was three creative guys and Stan in charge of the entire agency,” Dady says. “All of us had been with Stan over 40 years, all of us were white and all of us were men.”

 

In total, the agency has around 330 employees and more than 60 clients. The shop has hired 58 employees this year, of which it says 38% are “ethnically diverse” and 64% identify as women while it continues to recruit for open positions. While its full seven-person leadership team hasn’t been officially named, Dady says it consists of one person of color (Wilson) and 50% women, including Sue Batterton, who in July was brought back as the agency’s first chief creative officer. The agency also brought back another Richards Group-alum, Trevor Monteiro, as head of brand media.

 

“We'll also be looking externally as well as we move forward and continue to build out our leadership group, “ Wilson says. “The other thing that we're focusing on as well is in clarifying and defining titles and roles and responsibilities for our team. That came across loudly from our employees during the time of transformation. So we want to make sure that we're listening to our employees, because they didn't see a clear path forward in terms of titles and roles.”

 

Dady says he has been focused on the clients that have chosen to stay with the agency as well as new business opportunities. Currently, some of the biggest clients for the agency from a revenue perspective include Charles Schwab and Choctaw Casinos and Resorts. The agency now provides monthly diversity and inclusion reports to its clients and also doesn’t shy away from its past during new-business pitches, Dady says.

 

“It’s something we bring up right at the very beginning to make sure that they do know what happened, that they're comfortable with it,” Dady says. “We don’t want to waste their time nor do we want to waste our time.”

 

Batterton, who had been with the agency for 10 years, said The Richards Group has updated its creative brief to be more inclusive and will be focused on recruiting diverse talent and creating better content moving forward.

 

“As difficult as it was, this was a necessary change to honestly prepare us for the next 40 years, it was a wake-up call,” Batterton says. “Stan was always the public face, but I will tell you, Glenn is the soul and all the good parts of the culture. When he was named the successor, I have to tell you that he had the love and the support of the people behind him. And there's no one that we’d rather help figure out the future with.”

 

The Richards Group’s most recent business win is Dave’s Killer Bread, which, according to its website, was founded by a rehabilitated convict who opened a successful bakery after his release. One of the frequently asked questions on the Dave’s site is whether the company hires people with felony convictions. “Yes,” reads the answer. “We believe that everyone is capable of greatness, and we have seen firsthand the powerful transformation that is possible when someone is given a second chance.”