16462: Red Lobster + Cheap Shrimp = Disaster At Sea.

 

Business Insider reported on the Red Lobster Ultimate Endless Shrimp promotion that ultimately put the restaurant chain in the red with endless profit drops that were not shrimpy. Red Lobster owner Thai Union Group didn’t put a specific figure on the revenue-gouging event, only saying that it contributed to 3Q 2023 losses of $11 million.

 

Next scheduled promotion: The Red Dumpster Fire Sale.

 

Red Lobster’s $20 promotion backfired, signaling how desperate diners are for cheap deals

 

By Nancy Luna

 

Americans are hungry for cheap deals. Red Lobster learned that the hard way.

 

In its latest quarter, profits tanked due to an overwhelming response to the chain’s $20 Ultimate Endless Shrimp deal.

 

Too many people took advantage of the low-margin offer, and it was “one of the key reasons for the losses we generated in Q3 2023,” Ludovic Garnier, the global chief financial officer of the chain’s owner, Thai Union Group, told investors during its November earnings call.

 

The chain rolled out the $20 all-you-can-eat shrimp promotion to increase the number of visits to its restaurant. Red Lobster had previously offered the long-standing promotion once a week. The chain tweaked it this year by offering the promotion every day.

 

Its generosity backfired because the chain underestimated the number of diners hunting for dining deals amid a spate of rising menu prices.

 

They anticipated the promotion would give them a 20% boost in traffic. Instead, they got a 40% boost.

 

Though inflation is slowing, menu prices remain on the uptick, according to new federal data released in November. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that restaurant prices, or food away from home, increased by 5.4% in October year-over-year. Fast-food prices are rising even more, up by 6.2% over the past 12 months.

 

Garnier said the promotion “clearly shows” that US diners are looking for value.

 

“For those who have been in the US recently, $20 was very cheap,” he said.

 

Ultimately, $20 for endless shrimp was too cheap for Red Lobster.

 

“We don’t earn a lot of money at $20,” Garnier said.

 

That hurt the company’s bottom line. “It did not deliver what we were expecting.”

 

But instead of scrapping the new promotion, the chain gradually raised its price from $20 to $22. It's now at $25.

 

“We do believe it’s a very strong promotion,” Garnier said. “It’s one of the iconic promotions for Red Lobster. So we want to keep it on the menu.”

15274: HR Globetrotters Saving The World From Systemic Racism…?

Business Insider reported Ogilvy hired a Global Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer and Chief People Officer for North America. Of course they did. It’s a delegating diversity double duty—as well as more titles than can comfortably fit on a standard business card. The latest heat shield executive apparently replaces the Worldwide Executive Director of Diversity & Inclusion hired by Ogilvy in 2019, who elevated to the role of Global Executive Director of Diversity & Inclusion at WPP before bailing out to become the first-ever Global Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer at Condé Nast. Gee, with all these regional, continental and planetary figures, why is the advertising industry still White World?

15207: Citi Deposits Diversity Directives—Account Withdrawals From White Ad Agencies To Follow…?

Business Insider reported new Citi CMO Carla Hassan asked her White advertising agencies to diversify their staffs. The request parallels Citi’s $1 billion initiative to help close the racial wealth gap in the nation. It’s a safe bet that the White shops will not come close to matching the Citi figure, opting to make tax-deductible donations to popular heat shields like ADCOLOR® and The 3% Movement. It’s time for White advertising agencies to not only reveal diversity staffing figures, but also display diversity budget figures. The revelation would likely show how any efforts from Chief Diversity Officers and Chief Marketing Officers are ultimately trumped by Chief Financial Officers.

 

Citi was the first major bank to let transgender and non-binary cardholders use their chosen names. Now, it’s pushing its agencies to become more diverse.

 

By Tanya Dua

 

Citi is highlighting transgender and non-binary people in its new campaign while becoming the latest marketer to push for more diversity at its ad agencies.

 

The TV, print, and outdoor campaign, timed with Trans Awareness Week, touts its initiative to let transgender and non-binary customers use their chosen names on its credit cards. The campaign is rare in terms of transgender representation, which has been virtually non-existent from advertising.

 

Citi’s new CMO Carla Hassan also recently asked the company’s agencies to make their staffs more diverse and join Citi’s effort to fight bias and “level the playing field” for communities of color. This move came on the heels of Citi announcing a $1 billion initiative to help close the racial wealth gap in the US in September.

 

Hassan said that Citi wanted to increase the number of people of color on its accounts and that she “hoped” that by the end of 2023:

 

• People of color will make up 25% of the agency teams servicing Citi accounts
• People of color will make up 25% of casting in Citi marketing
• People of color will comprise at least 8% of senior agency leadership, in line with Citi’s own commitment
• Commit to have at least 25% of brand stories highlighting minority-owned businesses and organizations annually

 

“As we’ve heard the calls for racial justice echoing across the country, it’s clear that more of the same won’t do,” she wrote. “Words can be promising but mean nothing if they don’t result in tangible action.”

 

Other marketers including HP, Verizon and General Mills have called for similar changes in the ad and agency business, which is known for its lack of diversity. Only 3% of US CMOs and 6% of marketing professionals are black, though black people make up about 13% of the population, according to a 2018 survey by the Association of National Advertisers.

 

In 2016, Verizon required its agencies to report how many women and people of color they employed, particularly in leadership roles. Three years later, its CMO Diego Scotti said his company’s 20 agencies had increased the minorities on their payrolls by around 25%. But this change was not good enough, and the number of women in top agency roles actually decreased in that period, he said.

 

Like other marketers, Citi has also made social justice a bigger part of its advertising. A recent ad, “The Moment,” highlighted the gender pay and leadership gap, and it recently launched a partnership with Girl Scouts aimed at encouraging civic participation.

15145: Mickey D’s Is Probably Not Lovin’ It…

Business Insider published a supersized report on Denise Paleothodoros, the ex-girlfriend of ex-Mickey D’s CEO Steve Easterbrook. The two met while Paleothodoros worked on the fast food account at PR firm Golin and Easterbrook served as McDonald’s chief brand officer—although Paleothodoros was removed from the business after openly acknowledging the relationship to her employer. So, technically, the affair did not violate the Golden Arches’ golden rule forbidding copulation between coworkers. And Paleothodoros doesn’t appear to be involved with the sexually explicit text messages and photos collected on Easterbrook’s mobile phone. All of which makes the 1750-word Business Insider story a lot less interesting than Ronald McDonald’s alleged romance with Burger King’s mascot.

15013: Pondering Papa John’s Pizza Pandemic Profits.

Business Insider reported fast-food restaurants have been experiencing sales spikes during the COVID-19 crisis—with the big winners including Papa John’s. The pizza joint that weathered racism and sexism is now benefiting from a global pandemic? Somebody cue the Apocalypse.

The quarantine diet: People are eating more pizza and chicken wings, boosting sales at Papa John’s and Wingstop as other restaurants face sales slumps

By Kate Taylor

As Americans shelter in place and restaurant sales suffer, a few chains are thriving.

On Wednesday, Wingstop reported same-store sales were up by more than 30% in April. Papa John’s had similarly cheery earnings the same day, with same-store sales up 26.9% in April.

Even in late March, when restaurant sales were the lowest across the industry, wings and pizza remained popular. Wingstop said its sales were up 8.9% in the second half of March. Papa John’s reported at the end of March that its same-store sales were “negatively impacted by the cancellation of large gatherings,” but that sales were up 3.6% in the last month.

These sales explosions are in stark contrast to the rest of the restaurant industry.

While fast-food chains have generally weathered the coronavirus pandemic better than the industry as a whole, chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell said that sales dropped by 20% to 35% in late March.

Restaurants without drive-thrus faced an even more dire financial situation. Waffle House’s same-store sales dropped by 70% to 80% in late March at locations that remained open, the company told Business Insider. The Cheesecake Factory saw similar declines, with sales down roughly 75% before beginning to recover in April.

The National Restaurant Association said in late April that the industry lost $30 billion in March and was on track to lose $50 billion in April.

Wingstop and Papa John’s, as well as other delivery-centric pizza chains, have cashed in on customers sheltering in place. Americans were already familiar with the chains’ to-go business, and companies had the necessary infrastructure in place to ramp up sales, with an emphasis on digital ordering.

Wingstop said on Wednesday that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, off-premise already made up 80% of sales. Now, all of the chain’s business is to-go and delivery, with digital sales growing to 65% from 40% of sales.

Even as chains across the board push to-go and delivery offers, customers seem to be craving some foods more than others. A whopping 43% of respondents to a Gordon Haskett survey of more than 300 households said that they had increased their use of pizza delivery in the week ending May 1 — the highest percentage since analysts began surveying people on pizza orders in February.

14994: Coronavirus Will Change Everything Except Stupidity.

Business Insider published the following:

The CEO of McCann Worldgroup, one of the world's biggest ad agencies, says the coronavirus will change everything from real estate to awards shows

Harris Diamond said the pandemic has led McCann to reconsider its spending and place greater focus on things like HR, IT, and legal services.

The coronavirus is also exposing how the leaders of White advertising agencies are a lot more useless than they might admit or realize. It’s time to reconsider spending on salaries for rocks posing as, well, diamonds.

14888: Brazil Bombshell Confirms Advertising Agencies In The Country Are Sexist And Racist.

Business Insider published a story titled, “Anonymous spreadsheets allege sexual harassment and racism at some of the biggest ad agencies in Brazil. Anyone who finds this news shocking or surprising is a sexist racist.

14876: Mickey D’s Not In The Black With Franchisees.

Business Insider published a lengthy report titled, “McDonald’s gets slammed with new lawsuit claiming black franchisees were ‘disparately strong armed’ out of system.” Guess 365Black doesn’t apply to Black franchisees. Can’t wait to see the 2020 Black History Month propaganda from the Golden Arches.

14870: The Worst Ads Of The Decade Expose The Worst Hypocrisy Of The Ad Industry.

Business Insider presented “The worst ads of the decade,” calling out 15 advertisements that broke down as follows: 8 with race- and/or ethnicity-based cluelessness, 4 with sex- and/or gender-based cluelessness and 3 with general cluelessness. The results kinda underscore the outrageousness of White women crying discrimination in the advertising industry, especially considering that White women have been co-conspirators with White men in maintaining the underrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities in the field—and in the campaigns.

And a special shout-out to Brad Jakeman for making the Business Insider list via the Pepsi-Kendall Jenner video. The “honor” is another example of the outrageous hypocrisy so prevalent in the industry.

14764: Reports Claim We Are Unlimited Are Soon To Be DDB.

AgencySpy posted that Business Insider reported We Are Unlimited—or whatever is left of the White advertising agency—will be absorbed by DDB. If any minorities come with We Are Unlimited, Wendy Clark will probably count it as a diversity boost for the DDB franchise. Look for We Are Unlimited to soon pick up AOR duties on Propel.

Report: We Are Unlimited Will Be Folded Into DDB Chicago After McDonald’s Taps W+K

By Erik Oster

Less than a week after McDonald’s announced its new U.S. lead creative agency would be Wieden + Kennedy New York, it appears the once-dedicated agency Omnicom had created to service the chain will no longer stand on its own.

Citing anonymous sources, Business Insider today reported that We Are Unlimited will be folded into DDB Chicago at the beginning of next year. Sources told the publication that We Are Unlimited will retain its name but operate as part of DDB Chicago, while continuing to work on marketing for aspects of the McDonald’s business, including promoting the Happy Meal.

For now, DDB isn’t commenting, but the move certainly wouldn’t be the year’s most surprising. McDonald’s spent months undergoing a review of its U.S. agency model, with W+K New York eventually coming out as the big winner.

We Are Unlimited already had a round of layoffs earlier this month, attributed to changes to the McDonald’s account.

The move comes a week after McDonald’s selected W+K New York as its new U.S. lead creative agency, following a review of its U.S. agency model. It also follows a round of layoffs earlier this month attributed to changes to the account.

We Are Unlimited was created in 2016 after McDonald’s consolidated its creative account with Omnicom, ending its relationship with Publicis Groupe. The agency’s exclusive relationship with McDonald’s ended at the start of 2019 and the brand turned to TBWA/Chiat/Day to promote its McCafé house coffee line around a year ago, following a review limited to Omnicom agencies, which reportedly included We Are Unlimited.

Minda Smiley contributed reporting to this story.

14709: T-Mobile Takeover Of Sprint Is An Obscene Call.

Business Insider reported on the T-Mobile $26.5 billion takeover of Sprint. First of all, the move is hardly surprising, given that Sprint has been a telecommunications train wreck for years. Expect chaos in the months ahead as the transition process leads to reorganizations, resignations and redundancies—that is, there will be rampant terminations. Here’s hoping the first casualty will be the former Verizon “Can You Here Me Now?” character who defected to Sprint.

It’s official—T-Mobile’s $26.5 billion takeover of rival Sprint was just approved, despite fears of higher prices and job cuts

By Tali Arbel and Marcy Gordon, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. regulators are approving T-Mobile’s $26.5 billion takeover of rival Sprint, despite fears of higher prices and job cuts.

Friday’s approval by the Justice Department and five state attorneys general comes after Sprint and T-Mobile agreed to conditions that would set up satellite-TV provider Dish as a fourth wireless company, so the number of major U.S. providers remains at four.

Dish is buying prepaid cellphone brands such as Boost and Virgin Mobile and some spectrum, or airwaves for wireless service, from the two companies. It will also be able to rent T-Mobile’s network for seven years while it builds its own. The Justice Department’s antitrust chief, Makan Delrahim, said the settlement sets up Dish “as a disruptive force in wireless.”

Sprint and T-Mobile combined would now approach the size of Verizon and AT&T. The companies have argued that bulking up will mean a better next-generation “5G” wireless network than they could make on their own.

The two companies tried to combine during the Obama administration but regulators rebuffed them. They resumed talks on combining once President Donald Trump took office, hoping for more industry-friendly regulators. The companies appealed to Trump’s desire for the U.S. to “win” a global 5G race with China as this faster, more reliable wireless is rolled out and applications are built for it.

Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission agreed in May to back the deal after T-Mobile promised to build out rural broadband and 5G, sell its Boost prepaid brand and keep prices on hold for three years.

But public-interest advocates complained the FCC conditions did not address the problems of the merger—higher prices, less wireless competition—and would be difficult for regulators to enforce.

Attorneys general from 13 states and the District of Columbia then filed a lawsuit to block the deal. They say the promised benefits, such as better networks in rural areas and faster service overall, cannot be verified, while eliminating a major wireless company will immediately harm consumers by reducing competition and driving up prices for cellphone service.

They may not be satisfied with the settlement and choose to press ahead.

A judge must also approve the Justice Department’s settlement.

13678: HBCU FU.

Business Insider reported Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was greeted with boos while delivering commencement remarks at Bethune-Cookman University, an HBCU in Florida. Hey, maybe President Donald Trump was nearby at his Mar-a-Lago Club and could have stopped by to calm the crowd, as he’s “always had a great relationship with the Blacks.”

Betsy DeVos just spoke at a historically black university, and the crowd booed so loudly the college president threatened to stop graduation

By Abby Jackson

Betsy DeVos was met with raucous boos as she reached the lectern to deliver her commencement remarks at Bethune-Cookman University on Wednesday.

For nearly the entire time the secretary of education spoke, she was booed, shouted at, and met with calls of “Go home!” from students and audience members.

About two minutes into DeVos’ speech, the university’s president, Edison Jackson, stopped her to address the students disrupting it.

Jackson said degrees would be mailed to students if their behavior continued.

“Choose which way you want to go,” he said.

DeVos restarted her speech, but the threat went unheeded as boos picked up again. DeVos powered on, sticking to prepared remarks. She addressed some of the opposition to her speaking at the historically black university in Daytona Beach, Florida, asking for those critical of her to hear her out and voicing her support for historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs.

“We support you, and we will continue to support you,” she said.

DeVos released a statement after the speech addressing BCU graduates. “I was grateful for the opportunity to speak with and honor the graduates of Bethune-Cookman University…I have respect for all those who attended, including those who demonstrated their disagreement with me,” the statement read.

The weeks leading up to her speech were marked by vocal opposition from students, civil-rights organizations, and Florida education groups, who say she does not understand the history and significance of HBCUs.

On Tuesday, petitions were delivered to university leaders urging them to disinvite DeVos from the commencement ceremony.

“Secretary DeVos has no understanding of the importance, contributions, and significance of HBCUs,” said a Change.org petition signed by more than 8,000 people.

Both DeVos and the Trump administration have endeavored to engage HBCUs in conversations about higher education, meeting with leaders of HBCUs and voicing support for their contributions.

But their efforts have been marked by gaffes and uncertainty about the administration’s plans to help better serve the institutions.

After meeting with leaders of HBCUs in February, DeVos ignited controversy with a statement that called HBCUs “real pioneers when it comes to school choice.”

She implied that HBCUs and school vouchers, of which DeVos is a fierce supporter, similarly afforded students better options.

HBCUs “are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality,” she said. “Their success has shown that more options help students flourish.”

She failed to acknowledge that many HBCUs were created because black students could not attend white segregated schools. In other words, they weren’t providing better options — they were the only options for black students.

DeVos later posted a series of tweets clarifying the racist history that necessitated the emergence of HBCUs.

In a statement last week, President Donald Trump seemed to indicate that key funding for HBCUs might be unconstitutional and therefore scrapped. Experts saw his comments as a signal that certain funding for HBCUs was at risk. Trump later pledged his “unwavering support” for the schools.

13671: Diverted Diversity Not Diverse.

Business Insider presented, “The 30 most creative women in advertising”—a collection of creative females that shows diverted diversity is not very diverse.

13589: Most-Liked Are Most Alike.

Business Insider fabricated a list titled, “The 10 most-liked advertising CEOs”—which turned out to be a ranking of predominately Old White Guys (the lone exception being Teads CEO Bertrand Quesada, who appears to be a relatively Young White Guy).

There’s actually a lot to dislike about the most-liked crew. For starters, the ten men were identified using data from Glassdoor. Sorry, but AgencySpy would be a more accurate and credible source for finding likeable candidates—and to be clear, AgencySpy would be a completely shitty choice for such an endeavor. Of course, there are no holding company honchos in the group. Imagine that. Does the lack of women and minorities indicate that White men are best suited to lead advertising agencies? Or is it just that the industry’s White male dominance leaves Glassdoor respondents with no other option but to salute the existing exclusive leadership?

13586: Sorrell’s Sleep-Inducing Commentary.

Business Insider reported WPP Overlord Sir Martin Sorrell said what keeps him up at night isn’t his 3-month-old daughter; rather, his sleepy time is interrupted with worries over Amazon. Hey, why would Sorrell’s child pose any cause for concern? Daddy makes enough money to keep her safe and secure forever. It’s actually WPP workers who should be tossing and turning, wondering how long they’ll remain employed and able to support their families.

The CEO of the world’s biggest ad company says Amazon — not his 3-month-old daughter — is what keeps him up worrying at night

By Lara O’Reilly

As the CEO of the world’s largest advertising group, WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell has been interviewed an awful lot during his long career. And he often gets asked the same question: “What keeps you up at night?”

Speaking on WPP’s fourth-quarter earnings call, 72-year-old Sorrell — whose wife recently gave birth to a daughter — shared his response.

“The answer to the question, ‘What worries you when you go to bed at night and wake up in the morning?’ isn’t a 3-month-old child,” Sorrell said. “It’s Amazon — which is a child but not three months.”

Sorrell has good reason to be worried.

Right now, Amazon’s advertising business pales in comparison to the likes of Google and Facebook. Amazon doesn’t strip out its advertising unit specifically in its financials, but the company’s “other” revenue in North America — believed to consist mostly of ad revenue — grew 60% to $1.3 billion in 2016. eMarketer predicts that Amazon will generate $1 billion in ad revenue in the US in 2017. That compares to estimates of $34 billion in revenue for Google and $15 billion for Facebook.

Sorrell often refers to Facebook and Google as “frenemies.” WPP works with them as a partner when it spends its clients’ marketing budgets on search or social-media ads (WPP spent just under $5 billion of its clients’ budgets with Google last year and $1.7 billion with Facebook), but Google and Facebook also threaten advertising agencies because they have the ability to work with clients directly, cutting out the middle man.

Amazon’s nascent ad business has the ability to do the same. Nobody in the online ad business has more data about the way we shop, how often we shop, and what items we look at and decide not to buy.

Sorrell thinks Amazon is a huge threat to Google when it comes to search. If you’re a sneaker brand, the most valuable place to advertise is when someone is actively searching to buy a pair of sneakers. On Google the person might just be researching, but with Amazon the consumer is most likely in the market to make a purchase right away.

Sorrell described Google as the “friendlier frenemy” of the three online ad giants (as he has done before). He placed Facebook in the middle and Amazon at the unfriendly end of the scale.

“It’s early days with Amazon, you never know what’s going to happen,” Sorrell said. “We put together an agency in Seattle,” the location of Amazon’s headquarters, “specifically to deal with Amazon and cater to Amazon.”

Advertising agencies are also increasingly facing competition from consultancy firms. Firms including Accenture and Deloitte have been busy acquiring independent ad agencies in recent months.

But Sorrell brushed off concerns that consulting firms presented an immediate threat to WPP. He mentioned one pitch, in which WPP’s agency VML was up against firms including Deloitte and Accenture as well as traditional agencies for a $300 million account. (VML won.) But he said there hadn’t been many other occasions in which WPP needed to compete against consultancies for big pieces of business, adding: “I don’t think it’s that significant.”

WPP’s share price was down 7.75% at the time of writing after the ad group warned 2017 had gotten off to a slow start and its projected 2% full-year 2017 organic revenue growth came in below analysts’ expectations. WPP usually forecasts annual organic growth of 3%. Sorrell attributed much of the drop-off to the loss of two big accounts: Volkswagen, which was worth $2.8 billion in bookings, and AT&T, which was worth $1.8 billion.

2016, however, was a good year for WPP. The company reported a 7.4% lift (in constant currency) in net sales to $12.4 billion, while profit after tax increased 7.2% year-on-year to $1.5 billion.

As usual in the quarterly earnings call, WPP also shared its useful slide on all the macro and micro trends affecting the ad business right now:

13553: Twitter Twits.

Business Insider listed “The 30 best people in advertising to follow on Twitter”—which reflected the advertising industry pretty perfectly, in that the list featured mostly White men and White women, including a fair amount of diverted diversity defenders. Sorry, but the Twitter talents of Cindy Gallop, Kat Gordon, Lindsay Pattison and Wendy Clark rival the tweeting prowess of President Donald Trump.

13490: God Save The Queen.

Business Insider presented “All the advertising, media, and marketing figures named in the Queen’s New Year Honours List”—which appears to be a group comprised of White men, White women and one Canadian of Indian descent. From a diversity perspective, it’s royal bullshit.

13405: Most Creative Are Mostly White.

Business Insider presented “The 30 most creative people in advertising 2016”—which pretty much looked like the 30 most creative people in advertising 1916 and every year in between. That is, the most creative people in advertising are mostly White men and White women.

13347: Delayed WTF 34: IPG DNA BS.

MultiCultClassics is often occupied with real work. As a result, a handful of events occur without the expected blog commentary. This limited series—Delayed WTF—seeks to make belated amends for the absence of malice.

Business Insider published an interview with IPG CEO Michael Roth at Advertising Week Europe, which included the following excerpt:

BI: One of the other big over-arching advertising topics that has certainly had a few high-profile cases this year has been diversity in the industry.

IPG has been no exception with what happened at Campbell Ewald (IPG fired the agency’s CEO and a staffer who sent a racist email to colleagues inviting them to take part in a “Ghetto Day”) the ongoing JWT discrimination suit (in which the agency’s now former CEO is accused of making racist and sexist slurs — allegations he denies.) What are holding groups like yourselves doing to ensure there are less of these cases happening?

MR: When I first joined the industry I felt as though diversity and inclusion was not properly reflected in the industry, so 10 years ago we embarked on diversity and inclusion being a core part of the DNA at IPG.

It’s now to a point where our agency heads are held accountable for improvements on diversity and inclusion. When I mean accountable, I mean it affects their bonuses. And we have in fact enforced that to a point where, since we embarked on this program, we have had an improvement of over 50% of manager-level people representative of inclusion and diversity goals over the past 10 years. There is more work to come but I think we’ve made it our DNA.

The other part of it is that we have a zero-tolerance for it. As reflected in the Campbell Ewald [incident.] The second I heard about this, we took action. Not only with respect to the individual who wrote that email, which was offensive, but the individual who was responsible for him, and I took action on them. There was no hesitancy on my part, as opposed to some others.

And, frankly, I was very proud of the fact that I received both internally and externally a lot of comments appreciating how swiftly we acted in that case and our people were very much appreciative of it because they knew it was part of our core.

BI: What is it about the advertising industry that is different to other sectors when it comes to diversity issues?

MR: When I challenge individuals they say there are not enough candidates that are interested in the field, and so on.

Intuitively, that does not make sense. I don’t accept that as an answer when we go over this. We have to do a better job of reaching out and, in essence, selling the career path that we offer. It’s a great career path.

We are in the marketing and communication business. How can we not represent the consumer?

And, by the way, on the gender side, 80% of all purchasing decisions are made by females. So if we don’t have a fair representation just on the female side, we are missing the boat.

But as far as people of color … the same is true. Hispanic is one of the largest growing populations in the world. How can we not be representative of that in terms of the talent? And our clients are demanding this.

So Roth believes a decade of smokescreens has resulted in diversity and inclusion becoming a part of the IPG DNA? Okay, let’s review the progressive proof:

• Four words: Campbell Ewald Ghetto Days.

• IPG behemoth Draftfcb—now FCB—vowed to eliminate the term “diversity and inclusion” from the corporate lexicon by 2014. Now the words are a “core part the DNA at IPG.” Sorry, but IPG is rotten to the core.

• IPG faced a $50 million race-discrimination lawsuit.

• IPG faced an age discrimination lawsuit.

• IPG agencies consistently create culturally clueless crap.

• Deutsch, an IPG White advertising agency, dumped its Diversity Director, who claimed she was told the shop “was no longer going to invest in diversity.”

• IPG brags about dubious diversity awards and its fuzzy commitment and experience with progress.

• IPG publishes gobbledygook claiming to be recognized for leadership in diversity and inclusion—in an industry where everyone admits the dearth of diversity and inclusion is fucked up. It’s like boasting that you’re the smartest Stooge.

And the list goes on.

13328: Is Wendy Clark A McHypocrite?

Advertising Age and Business Insider added to the Mickey D’s PR hype, with DDB Worldwide President and CEO of North America Wendy Clark babbling about McBabel—the wondrous-yet-undefined “Agency of the Future” handcrafted to save the Golden Arches.

“…We worked Mother’s Day. We worked Father’s Day,” bragged/whined Clark about the pitch that won the business. “Almost all of the team missed Cannes. So many vacations were postponed.” Yes, it’s nice to know McBabel will be a Mom-unfriendly and Dad-unfriendly sweatshop. That should go over well with any typical Millennials—as well as any lazy Boomers—ultimately employed by the firm. As for missing out on the highly exclusive jaunt to the French Riviera, oh, the humanity!

Mickey D’s “is one of the most democratic and inclusive brands in the world,” gushed Clark. “McDonald’s is for everybody. It’s not exclusionary. It has a broad expanse around the world, availability, value, affordability—you have the ability to have good food at a reasonable price around the corner from you. The brand doesn’t distinguish and hold itself just for small groups. That’s something I love about the brand. They are very clear on what their brand is, and it’s a wonderful thing to have a brand that has that legacy.”

Okey-doke. It will be interesting to see whether or not the restless diversity champion—along with John Wren, Omnicom’s resident Pioneer of Diversity—make good on their vows when erecting McBabel. If the “Agency of the Future” is indeed being built from scratch, it should be easy to incorporate futuristic hiring practices to ensure the staff reflects the democratic and inclusive Mickey D’s audience. Why, it’s the perfect opportunity to bake digital, data and diversity into the core of the company. It’s also the perfect opportunity for Clark and Wren to demonstrate they’re not lying, hypocritical dinosaurs. The next 120 days will reveal the truth.