14328: Champion Of The People.

Campaign reported WPP UK Country Manager and MediaCom UK & Ireland Chairwoman Karen Blackett was appointed Race Equality Business Champion by UK Prime Minister Theresa May. Great, now even governmental leaders are delegating diversity in adland and beyond. Plus, it was recently revealed that the U.S. advertising industry employs fewer than 100 Black female executives. How do UK figures compare? How rare is the new Race Equality Business Champion?

PM appoints Karen Blackett as race equality business champion

Karen Blackett OBE, WPP UK country manager and chairwoman of MediaCom UK & Ireland, has been appointed race equality business champion by the Prime Minister as part of a Race at Work Charter launched at a roundtable hosted by WPP today.

The charter, which sets out five practical steps for businesses to drive forward race equality in the workplace, has also been signed by companies including Shell, Norton Rose Fulbright and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

It is run by the Prince of Wales’s responsible business network Business in the Community and calls on organisations to help ethnic minority staff progress at senior levels by removing barriers and embedding initiatives such as mentoring and sponsorship programmes.

Prime Minister Theresa May said: “Every employee deserves the opportunity to progress and fulfill their potential in their chosen field, regardless of which background they are from, but too often ethnic minority employees feel they’re hitting a brick wall when it comes to career progression.”

At WPP, Blackett has established an Inclusion Board to look at how apprenticeships and programmes focused on reverse mentoring can encourage a more diverse and reflective workforce.

She said: “Embracing diversity and inclusion is not a choice, it’s a business necessity. As the Race at Work champion, I’m committed to helping businesses address inequality at all levels by taking practical steps such as introducing apprenticeships, offering mentorships and capturing ethnicity data to create a more inclusive and representative workforce.”

14161: Blackett Is Beautiful.

Campaign spotlighted WPP U.K. Country Manager and MediaCom Chairwoman Karen Blackett, who appeared at the Creative Equals Future Leaders in London and remarked, “15% of our creative talent is from EU markets and we want them to feel they belong.” Um, does anyone who isn’t White feel they belong in adland?

WPP’s Blackett: opportunity for creative industries is to make people feel they belong post-Brexit

Karen Blackett, UK country manager at WPP and chairwoman at MediaCom, has said the opportunity for the creative industries is to make people feel like they belong in a post-Brexit world.

By Nicola Kemp

Speaking at the Creative Equals Future Leaders in London last week, Blackett (pictured) said: “15% of our creative talent is from EU markets and we want them to feel they belong.”

Describing modern Britain as a “beautiful fruit salad of people”, she said the more that diversity is reflected in organisations the easier it becomes to connect with people.

A question of confidence

Blackett noted that, regardless of how we voted, Brexit is coming and it has knocked consumer confidence. A state of play which she says means that for brands it is no longer about getting on consumers’ consideration list it is about getting on the “priority list”.

She said the current market is described internally within WPP as grappling with “VUCA” (volatility; uncertainty/the known unknowns; complexity and ambiguity/the unknown unknowns).

However, she noted that “this is the ninth consecutive year we are predicting growth in the advertising industry”.

Digital, technology and data

Despite the industry’s much-discussed focus on data and digital transformation, according to Blackett, less than 10% of clients at Group M have a single view of a customer. She said: “If we can harness this data it will be like catnip for the creative solutions we can come up with.”

Blackett said that technology allows us to do more for our clients and ‘whatever department we work in we need to lean into this’. In practical terms she said this means knowing who your tech partners are.

She said the core question for the industry is “how do we ensure we have a point of difference?” “When clients are bringing things in house the question is how can we be with them on that journey and have a role?”

Technology allows us to do more for our clients—whatever department we work in we need to lean into this she added, and asked, “who are your tech partners do you know your tech partners.”

“How do we ensure we have a point of difference? Bringing things in house for clients—how can we be with them on that journey and have a role. Technology allows us to do that but it can also be a threat,” Blackett added.

13796: Diversity Of Thoughtless.

Campaign published witless words from Sue Unerman—sporting an upgraded title of MediaCom Chief Transformation Officer—who declared, “Facebook and other media must make room for diversity of thought.” Um, Facebook has enough trouble just dealing with regular diversity. Unerman should focus on her true interest of diverted diversity versus whatever she sought to accomplish in her silly essay. The CTO did make a couple of comments worth examining:

There used to be a poster in MediaCom’s old office which I am thinking of re-issuing. It showed dogs and cats and mice working productively together with the slogan: “I hate you; you’re hired”. Its intention was to point out that diversity of opinion makes you stronger and that a good argument with a thesis, antithesis and synthesis, gets you better decisions…

Sure, MediaCom loves diversity of opinion, but its commitment to true diversity is questionable, as a peek at the company’s Global Leaders and Executive Committee shows a pretty exclusive breed of dogs, cats and mice. “I hate you; you’re hired” appears to be only half true for racial and ethnic minorities (the first half, to clarify for any clueless readers).

For a stronger, more balanced society, and for a stronger, more successful workplace, we need to encourage not just diversity of gender and personal attributes, but also diversity of thought.

Is “personal attributes” the new catch-all phrase for anyone who isn’t primarily a White man or White woman? If so, it’s a safe bet that Unerman and her MediaCom pals think diversity of thought trumps personal attributes.

13449: Dodging Diversity.

Campaign presented a bait-and-switch with content titled, “‘You need diversity of thought and diversity of experience’ Phil Hall”—featuring an interview with Mediacom Chief Commercial Strategy Officer Phil Hall, who blathered on about his career in the field. The story’s headline might have led readers to think Hall would offer the standard diversity dodges, opting to embrace diverted diversity and avoiding true diversity. But Hall didn’t even do that. In fact, besides mentioning that the Mediacom business is diversifying and growing, the interview failed to directly touch on any form of diversity. The Campaign content inadvertently reflected diversity in the advertising industry perfectly; that is, the notion is occasionally mentioned, but never legitimately discussed and acted upon.

‘You need diversity of thought and diversity of experience’ Phil Hall

Mediacom’s Phil Hall tells John De Napoli why collaboration is crucial, why it’s hard to switch off, and why “t-shaped” people are the industry’s rising stars...

Who are the industry’s biggest boundary pushers, the ones who have really made a difference? And who do they most admire? In association with The Trade Desk, we invite the biggest industry names to interview their boundary-pushing peers – and pass on the baton, in an interview relay.

In the previous instalment, Mean Broadcast’s managing director, John De Napoli, chose Mediacom’s chief commercial strategy officer, Phil Hall, as his boundary pusher. Now he speaks to him…

What made you get into the media industry?

I needed to get a job! I had no plans to enter the industry at all. I didn’t even know what it was before I started working in it. I’d just come back from university and saw an ad in the Guardian to work for TSMS. I did a bit of research, turned up and started from there, in the airtime management unit. It was a really good starting place.

You’ve been at Mediacom for 16 years – what makes it the place for you?

It has changed beyond belief in terms of size and client base, which has made it really interesting. It was a relatively small agency and it’s growing really fast. Since the early days, we’ve had a culture which is if you can find a way to add value, if you spot an opportunity, you can do it. People rally around you to support you, and there’s no politics — which makes it refreshing, and makes it a place where you can actually get something done.

What qualities make a successful director and which of these do you have?

The obvious things you need to be successful in any role are self motivation, problem solving, curiosity, and refusal to accept the norms. The nuts and bolts of this business haven’t actually changed — it’s everything around the edges. I think the people that can challenge the norms, and say there’s a different way of doing things — executing a campaign or selling a product — are really succeeding at the moment. Collaboration has never been more important. If you’re an expert in a disconnected silo then you’re less than half as effective as someone who is perhaps less talented but is really connected into the business.

What keeps you motivated and interested?

Two things keep me motivated. Our business is diversifying and growing, and at Mediacom we’re always looking at ways we can get involved in different things outside of the day to day planning and buying of media. If we can look to add value for clients in other ways and take advantage of all the change, that’s really interesting work.

The second thing is working with really talented people. It’s an amazing thing to help someone build their career and fulfill their potential. I’ve had people work for me who’ve left — such as Simon Broderick who’s at MediaCom APAC, and Naomi Harston who’s now at Google — who’ve gone on to have brilliant careers. There are people in my current team who will go on to run big businesses in media and it’s fantastic to be a part of that.

Who do you admire on the sales side of the industry?

I really like people that can adapt their sell to suit our clients and our business. People who work in a more collaborative way will get a lot more out of media. Sales companies can be relatively small in their sector but really punch above their weight by working more innovatively. I admire the way that Nick Bampton ran that team at Channel 5, the way that Tim Bleakley at Ocean sets up his business, and Chris Forrester — to whom I’m passing on my baton. These are people that haven’t always worked at the biggest places but have really engaged with customers and clients, and thought about how they can adapt their sell.

What’s going to happen for TV trading, radio and online in the next few years?

Programmatic and automation is the obvious answer. It’s happening now, and at a fast pace which is only going to accelerate. I think you’re going to see a two-tier system of trading where the bulk of the inventory is traded in a programmatic way, and then the icing on the cake is traded in a more traditional way, which is less data driven and more about brand equity. I think it’s an incredible opportunity.

The mistake a lot of people make in the industry is thinking that with automation will come a de-skilling of people and less need for talent. I think the opposite is true. Since the industrial revolution people have been saying that more automation and mechanisation means the need for people will become less and less, and it has never been true. If anything, agencies will grow, taking on different sorts of people.

It’s clear that some of the old skills are less valuable now. We need new ones to succeed, including the ability to be collaborative, and take complexity out of buying, translating the processes back into client-friendly language. There’s too much technical jargon in our business, which is disguising what people are trying to achieve. People who immediately default into jargon, and can’t properly vocalise what they are trying to do, probably don’t understand it. You need, for want of a better word, ‘interpreters’ within the business.

Media agencies have traditionally pushed through and promoted people that are technically excellent at what they do. That’s fine, but increasingly we’re valuing the skills of more t-shaped people — generalists who can bring together different parts of a team and can hold it all together to deliver a result back to a client. That’s a valuable and vital skill which you didn’t particularly need in media agencies five or six years ago. In the past, it’s always been that the trading people could sit in their silo and deliver great results. That’s not enough now. You need diversity of thought and diversity of experience. Those people harnessed together, working collaboratively, will be the key to success.

How would you go about attracting that new talent?

You’ve got to be very clear in your direction. For people to really succeed in my team they have to have a curiosity and a desire to help the rest of the business. Go out and see what the planners are talking about, what the content specialists are talking about, talk to data people, and think about your specialisms and how they can enhance the whole. If you sit there in a silo, you’re not adding value.

What’s your advice to an up-and-coming Phil Hall?

Do something you enjoy. We spend lot of time and put a lot of energy into the job, so you’ve got to enjoy it. Find somewhere where there’s a culture of identifying and fast-tracking talent and ideally a supportive boss. Work out how to add the most value to what you do, and just hurl yourself into it. That’s got to be your ambition, to find something where your success is in your own hands.

What’s the next big thing in media?

It’s the thing it’s always been: people. It’s about talent and people and harnessing them in the right way. Our industry has always been and will always be about people. Digital, programmatic, and content are inherently important, but if you haven’t got a well-managed and motivated team which is creating something different to service a client’s business, you will never truly succeed.

What’s next for you?

I’ve just started a new role here which is really exciting, and I’ve been working towards that for last 18 months. It’s a more strategic role, looking at the commerciality in our business and looking at how we can create new products to help clients and media owners, and work in more interesting ways. Beyond that, I’d like to run a media business one day. I think that’s where my career is leading and what I enjoy doing. Whether that’s agency or sales I don’t know.

The progress I’ve made over last few years has been a result of really enjoying what I do. Karen Blackett gave me a great bit of advice four or five years ago — she told me if I ever have three months in a row where I’m not enjoying my role I should go and talk to her before getting downhearted or starting to look elsewhere. I now give that advice to other people. Everyone has bad months and stress from things out of our control. But three in a row and there’s more likely to be a problem. I’ve never had three bad months in a row.

I want to keep enjoying my job and keep making a real difference at Mediacom and in the industry, getting more experience working in senior management, and working with talented people out there to create new, different ideas for clients.

13362: Putting The Ass In Glass.

MediaCom Chief Strategy Officer Sue Unerman is at it again, having co-written a diverted diversity book that declares it’s time to smash the glass wall. Not content to suffer with a mythical glass ceiling, Unerman has erected an associated wall for White women to protest—and she’ll likely publish a sequel where she invents a glass floor. There’s a clever twist here for a copywriter to pursue that incorporates “White women who live in glass houses…” Then again, MediaCom is a WPP company, where women are routinely disrespected—despite the fact that the MediaCom senior management team has a pretty solid showing of women. In the end, someone should have Unerman fitted for a glass slipper—at this point, she’s clearly crafting fairy tales.

12877: Inspiring Karen Blackett.

Campaign reported MediaCom CEO Karen Blackett was named among the Top Ten Inspirational Women by Marie Claire. Are there even ten Black women in the UK advertising and marketing industry? Given Blackett’s accomplishments, you’d think she would serve as inspiration for adland to ignite its diversity efforts.

Karen Blackett named among Marie Claire’s top ten inspirational women

By Omar Oakes

Karen Blackett, the chief executive of MediaCom, has been named as one of Marie Claire’s ten most inspirational women at its Women At The Top Awards.

The annual awards, hosted by the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Trish Halpin, honours ten female “game-changers who have shaped 2015”, from business to the arts.

Blackett was included on the list after topping the Powerful Media ‘Power List’ as ‘the most influential black person in Britain’, as well as being in charge of a budget of more than £1.2 billion and helping launch the first government-backed apprenticeship scheme for the creative industry.

She said: “I create a culture where you’re allowed to bring yourself to work. I want to recognise if some of our female talent is struggling with blending their work and home lives. We have many family-based initiatives [new mothers receive one week’s salary as a “baby bonus”, and their wage is raised ten per cent in the first year after they return to help with childcare].

“I regularly ask the team to tell me what they’d do if they were CEO for the day. Then we implement the best ideas. One of the winning ideas was introducing life coaching for everybody at the agency; we’ve now got a happier, more productive workforce and a better, profitable business.”

The ten winners:

Bridget Christie; award-winning comedian;

Destiny Ekaragha, filmmaker and only the third black female director to have released a feature-length film in the UK;

Pip Black and Joan Murphy, founders of Frame gym;

Dr Safia Jabeen, founder of the Chadni sexual health clinic for Muslim women;

Paula Hawkins, writer of the bestselling novel, The Girl on the Train;

Kim Woodward, the first female head chef at Gordon Ramsay’s Savoy Grill restaurant;

Major Natalie Taylor, a regimental medial officer for the British Army;

Emily Rawson, a DJ and founder of the all-female DJ collective, Rock the Belles;

Karen Blackett OBE, the chief executive of MediaCom;

and Josephine Goube, the director of strategic partnerships at Migreat, an online platform helping individuals with immigration.

12564: Media Hucksters & Kickbacksters.

Advertising Age reported former MediaCom CEO Jon Mandel insisted media agency rebates and kickbacks are business-as-usual occurrences in the U.S. and beyond. Um, Mandel’s revelations are like the Ku Klux Klan announcing they hate Blacks. Media agencies deal with more kickbacks than a Bruce Lee film festival. Of course, GroupM Chief Digital Officer Rob Norman quickly countered by saying, “In the U.S., rebates or other forms of hidden revenue are not part of GroupM’s trading relationships with vendors. GroupM and its agencies have not sought nor received any rebates from U.S. media vendors or other parties with whom we do business on behalf of our clients. In other markets around the world, rebates are sometimes part of the buy-sell relationship between agency and vendor. GroupM returns those rebates to advertisers in compliance with and as required by our client contracts.” Gee, Norman must have run that statement through legal before delivering it—and he probably received a kickback for doing so. Norman would probably also insist GroupM is committed to diversity—and point to MediaCom UK CEO Karen Blackett as patronizing proof—despite the predominately White global leadership depicted above. On all levels and in all areas, media wonks are the leading hucksters of the industry.

Former Mediacom CEO Alleges Widespread U.S. Agency ‘Kickbacks’

At ANA Forum, Mandel Details Practices He Puts Among Reasons He Left Agency World

By Jack Neff

Media agency rebates and kickbacks, long thought to be something that happened overseas—or only in pockets of the U.S. market—are actually widespread, said former Mediacom CEO Jon Mandel, so much so that it caused him to leave the agency business. Mr. Mandel made his remarks in a blistering presentation to the Association of National Advertisers Media Leadership Conference on Thursday in Hollywood, Fla.

Mr. Mandel, who left Mediacom as CEO in 2006 and later served three years as CEO of the NielsenConnect unit, made his remarks as CEO of media consultancy Dogsled Enterprises. He’s also CEO of marketing-analytics firm PrecisionDemand and board member or advisor to ad-tech firms, including online targeting firm eXelate.

While Mr. Mandel hasn’t led a media agency for nearly a decade, he based his remarks largely on what he said were private not-for-attribution conversations with media executives. His presentation included an image of one heavily redacted document that he said showed a media agency agreeing with an unnamed media vendor to an industry-standard 2% commission, but as much as 9% in volume-based incentives.

Mr. Mandel worked with other consultants in studying the issue at the behest of an ANA Media Transparency Task Force made up of about 20 ANA members whom Group Exec-VP Bill Duggan declined to name. But he said they include several packaged-goods marketers as well as executives from retail, pharmaceutical, finance and other industries.

“I personally believe we’re living through the least transparent time for the media industry in our careers,” Mr. Duggan said.

Media agencies aren’t living up to their fiduciary duties to clients and “cross the line of acceptable conduct in a partnership,” Mr. Mandel said. “They are not transparent about their actions. They recommend or implement media that is off strategy or off target if it works for their financial gain.”

Rebates, “kickbacks,” and other incentives for agencies that are at least potentially adverse to client interests, are happening virtually everywhere in the U.S. media landscape, including TV, he said. Mr. Mandel said the practice has migrated from cash incentives to free inventory, which agencies may then deal back to clients in scatter buys or sell via “dark pools” that are either traded programmatically or liquidated in barter transactions.

“Have you ever wondered why fees to agencies have gone down and yet the declared profits to these agencies are up?” Mr. Mandel said. He said that advertising spending broadly has long stayed within a narrow band of 1% to 1.25% of gross domestic product globally. “So if agencies are growing at a higher-than-GDP basis, the money is coming from somewhere.”

Most of the rebates and other non-transparent dealings occur at the holding-company level, where it’s harder to track or audit, Mr. Mandel claims.

He added that he believes clients should ask why agency chief financial officers and merger-and-acquisition executives are getting involved in media buys or ad-tech deals. He said they should also question agencies taking equity stakes in vendors that could be adverse to client interests. Mr. Mandel recommended clients periodically check with ad-tech vendors who weren’t placed on the “recommended list” by their media agencies to get an idea of why they weren’t included.

Mr. Mandel’s outlook was considerably harsher than that of Procter & Gamble Co. Global Brand Officer Marc Pritchard, who spoke on the subject earlier in the day.

“We trust our agencies,” Mr. Pritchard said after hearing Mr. Mandel’s talk. “It’s not something we take for granted, because it’s a trust-but-verify approach. …What I don’t know is how broadscale the stories he’s talking about are. In my view, he’s got to produce some evidence.”

In an e-mail statement, Nancy Hill, CEO of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, said: “The 4A’s and the ANA are, and will continue to be, in deep, high-level discussions on this issue. But as of right now, we have not been shown any data or information that warrants such allegations. Our position is that the financial arrangements between agency and client are just that, between those parties and confidential.”

10919: Campaign On Karen Blackett.

Campaign published a piece spotlighting “Women of Tomorrow” and actually managed to find a Black woman in the U.K. advertising and marketing industry. According to the article:

The IPA has joined forces with Campaign to identify ten ‘Women of Tomorrow’ — female leaders who are likely to shape the future. Interested parties can enter the competition via the IPA website www.ipa.co.uk/page/women-of-tomorrow-competition) before 31 January. Here, Campaign highlights the achievement of ten women in adland who have blazed a trail for those who follow.

The ten female executives initially presented by Campaign included MediaCom Chief Executive Karen Blackett:

Karen Blackett

chief executive, MediaCom

Blackett is the chief executive of the UK’s largest media agency — a business that seems to be overflowing with gifted women (the chief strategy officer, Sue Unerman, and the managing director, Claudine Collins, are also key players there). Blackett’s constant focus on finding and then nurturing talent is a massive factor in MediaCom’s success, so much so that, in November last year, she was named the UK’s seventh-most-influential black person by Powerlist, in part for launching an apprentice scheme aimed at non-graduates from less affluent backgrounds. That scheme also led the National Apprenticeship Service to choose Blackett to voice a recent radio ad.

Her rise from humble origins in Reading serves as her inspiration to encourage others. As she said in a recent Campaign column: “My race and my background haven’t prohibited my development. However, throughout my career, I have struggled to understand why there weren’t more people like me in the industry.”

Here is Blackett’s original Campaign column:

Agencies want to stand out, but they all look the same

By Karen Blackett

My dad always told me to “celebrate my differences”.

It was good advice. We’re not all the same. Nor should we want to be. Especially in an industry like ours, where it’s vital that we understand differences.

Our role as a communication agency is to help our clients change consumer behaviour, change brand perceptions, sell more products. Our clients’ brands and their campaigns have differing and varied target audiences. We need to understand all of those different audiences. We need to be able to walk in the shoes of all of our clients’ consumers. Hard to do if you’re only used to wearing Louboutins or Church’s brogues.

So surely we need to recruit and train talented, ambitious people into the industry who can build empathy with consumers from all walks of life. Shouldn’t our industry make-up reflect the society that we live in?

I grew up in a working-class family in Reading. My dad was a plumber, my mum was a nurse and they were first-generation immigrants to the UK from the West Indies. I started in the media industry in 1993. I joined during a recession when agencies were barely employing graduates, let alone those without any industry connections. It was tough to get in. I have been lucky to have a number of mentors who saw my potential and helped me to carve out a varied career. My race and my background haven’t prohibited my development. However, throughout my career, I have struggled to understand why there weren’t more people like me in the industry.

With the average tuition fees for a university degree course tripling in the past two years to £9,000 per annum, thousands of school-leavers are deciding university is too rich a concept for them. We are clearly missing out on a pool of talent if we only recruit graduates — especially if this is further narrowed to those from “Ivy League” universities or those with renowned media studies courses.

The UK’s black and ethnic-minority population now accounts for 12 per cent of the UK. The IPA’s Multicultural Britain report claims that, by 2051, England and Wales will be as diverse as London is now.

Encouraging diversity of all kinds in our industry is essential to our continued success. I launched an apprenticeship programme at MediaCom this year to do just that. We advertised it to a number of local authorities as well as academically strong schools that have a higher-than-average rate of free school meals (one of the main indicators of household poverty). We hope it will give real talent a chance to develop and shine, build a fantastic career and, as a by-product, future-proof my business and my agency’s growth.

My dad was right. I think more agencies and media owners need to take his mantra to heart.

Karen Blackett is the chief executive of MediaCom UK