14941: The New Old Ploy Of Taking On Ageism And Sexism At Once.

Campaign published another old-and-tired viewpoint on ageism in adland by Momentum Worldwide UK and Global Director of Brand Anna Dalziel, who was actually promoting 40 Over Forty—a divertsity stunt she co-founded to celebrate seasoned women. Why, it’s a divertsity double whammy. You go, old girl!

Ageism: the ad industry’s last taboo

A view from Anna Dalziel

A co-founder of 40 Over Forty explains why workplaces need to celebrate people of all ages.

Did you know Alan Rickman (pictured, above) was 46 when he became a global star after featuring in the blockbuster Die Hard? After this big break, he went on to conquer the stage and screen, becoming one of Britain’s most loved and recognised actors. His age didn’t hold him back, limit his opportunities or make him seek an alternative career path.

Unfortunately, in our creative industry of marketing, media and advertising, very few 40-plus people can break into the sector and many find it hard to remain past a certain age. People over 40 are feeling overlooked, undervalued and, at worst, invisible. That’s why I and two industry friends, Anna Scholes and Charlotte Read, created 40 Over Forty.

The initiative, which was launched two weeks ago, was built to give men and women who are 40-plus a platform to be acknowledged and celebrated for their experience, talent and positive impact they make on our industry. In just two weeks, we’ve had more than 100 nominations — it has been overwhelming in the best way. For me, it reinforces the reason we launched. The need was there, but no-one was taking action, so we did.

There are more conversations right now than ever before around ageism in the industry. Just look at platforms such as Fishbowl, where groups for over-40s in advertising have been set up and issues such as “Am I too old for the industry?” continue to be trending topics.

Ageism feels like one of the last taboos in our industry that need to be tackled. For some reason, we’ve become so focused on the new, the youth and innovation that we’ve forgotten age isn’t an obstacle to overcome but, for many, a superpower.

The narrative needs to change. That’s why companies including Momentum Worldwide, which is my day job, carry out reverse mentoring so that different ages, backgrounds and job roles can exchange skills and experience to learn from each other. This is just one way to show different ages are valued in a business.

Society isn’t made up of one type of person — we know this from many diversity studies and from opening our eyes, and that includes different ages. To effectively communicate and be part of society and culture, businesses, agencies and brands need to reflect the diverse range of the world.

The business results are clear. The material that has been published featuring a point of view on ageism always showcases the benefits. I’ve just read the book The Squiggly Career and on page 12 there’s an interesting set of charts that show “who is at work today?”, grouped by age. There are roughly five generations, from 75-plus to under-25s, working side by side, all with different needs and perspectives. That’s how it should be, because those different groups of people all add diversity of thought to a business. Aviva, one brand that is a pioneer in terms of ageism, has shared the many benefits it has gained from keeping an open mind during the interview process, such as retaining the best talent and reducing recruitment costs.

The responses received over the past fortnight have already given an insight into how our 40-plus industry feels. One nomination is for a 73-year-old creative from the US, whose company has evolved with him. He loves his job, is delivering great work and doesn’t see his number as a negative. Why should it be? We need more businesses like this. I read a great example of creative talent tackling ageism on LinkedIn this week, This is Fearless, which is an advertising network of ageless creativity. Talent of all ages need to be engaged, acknowledged and active within companies — not just at the C-suite level but in varied roles.

This is a wake-up call. Wake up, advertising, marketing and media. New doesn’t mean better. Innovative doesn’t mean young and 40 doesn’t mean the end of achieving in your career. Mindsets need to change for employees and employers. Let’s celebrate your number.

Anna Dalziel is director of brand, UK and global, at Momentum Worldwide

13733: Bullshit Builds Momentum.

Adweek published patronizing puffery promoting IAM, the high school dedicated to teaching minority youth about the advertising industry—and ultimately recruiting them into the field. Momentum Worldwide CEO Chris Weil penned the pap, and it would be interesting to learn the diversity figures at his company. The only hint of inclusiveness and culture at the agency website can be found via the online store, where MoMo Hammer Pants can be purchased for a mere $179.99.

Want a Robust and Diverse Talent Pipeline? Check Out This High School Dedicated to Advertising

4A’s ‘IAM’ program is a model of how to foster equality early

By Chris Weil

Today’s graduation of the High School for Innovation in Advertising and Media marks the ninth year of the 4A’s foray into helping build the next diverse generation of talent in marketing and advertising through its high school student initiative.

The 4A’s partnered with the New York City Department of Education in 2008 to form the first four-year high school in the nation dedicated exclusively to preparing students for careers in the advertising and media industry. That school in Brooklyn, known as IAM, is helping to train the future practitioners in our industry.

We’ve all heard the lament expressed across our industry in recent years about our talent pipeline drying up—young people weren’t learning the right skills to enter advertising or marketing positions, other fields were attracting students who previously would have considered advertising and marketing, and the diversity of the talent didn’t jibe with the diversity of the country’s population.

Those conversations, to be honest, are still occurring because we haven’t done enough to fix the underlying issues—yet. For example, still only 19 percent of people represented in advertisements are minorities, despite the fact that 30 percent of the voting-age population is a minority. That’s just one example of where we still have lots of room for improvement.

Industries of every type—and advertising and marketing stand out because of the cultural visibility of our work—grow when they tap into the varied thinking only possible with a diverse workforce. Diversity leads to marketing messages that are far more effective because they reflect the reality of the society and marketplace. And in our view, diversity has to begin with education and access, which was one of the core issues we addressed with our school programs.

This initiative builds on the 4A’s Multicultural Advertising Intern Program, or MAIP, which has connected aspiring diverse entry-level advertising professionals with prestigious advertising agencies for the last 44 years. But while we have been addressing the diversity issue long before it became a common theme, we know that it’s an ongoing challenge that requires additional solutions.

As we look to the 2017 class at IAM—graduating today—we can see that the program has been a success—and not just for those of us in the field of communications who want to see a more prepared and diverse pool of prospects making their way to our offices. It has been a success for the students.

What has, to me, been the most exciting development of our programs—which includes partnering with the City University of New York in 2014 to launch the first P-Tech (Pathways in Technology Early College High School) of its kind and the Manhattan Early College School for Advertising, or MECA—is that the kids are the biggest winners.

How do we know that our multipronged approach is reaching these students? Some 25 percent to 30 percent of IAM and MECA graduates are entering the advertising field—a generation of students who might otherwise never have even considered the possibility of advertising and marketing. While we can look on those recruitment numbers with pride, it’s also true that the graduation rate at our schools, which is trending at 78 percent, compared with about 64 percent at the average NYC public school, is the best reward.

It would be a dream to see 100 percent of the students enter our business, but by showing the thousands of students who have passed through the halls of the schools that creativity matters, that you can take your passions and turn them into careers, that there are myriad ways to do more in life, that is a reward that we can all celebrate.

By partnering with these schools, we are in effect expanding our society’s creative class—helping more people understand what a career in creativity is all about, inspiring more of them to consider advertising as a promising career opportunity and to understand all the ways they can be a part of a creative industry. Showing a student that his passion for social media can lead to a career or that the gamer playing video games could turn her interest into a life of building digital experiences for others is one of the most important aspects of these programs.

By next year, almost 1,000 ninth through 12th grade students will be studying advertising and marketing. At the same time, the MECA students will also be entering the community college part of their six-year program. They follow a regular high school curriculum—yes, with algebra, English and science—along with an additional specialty in marketing, advertising and design. Their curriculum includes soft skills such as presenting and storytelling; by their junior year, they are certified in Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative. For six years, the students will study not only every part of the agency and advertising ecosystem, but skills that will serve them in any creative field.

While a handful of individual companies have supported some schools, IAM and MECA are the first public schools in the U.S. to earn the support of an entire industry. The 4A’s uniquely offers this support by helping to create the advertising curriculum, teaching the classes, bringing students to agencies and creating mentorship and internship programs. Additionally, we are bringing in marketing clients such as Spotify and Reebok to introduce real-world briefs for the students to solve. This reinforces that the opportunity in our industry is to create work alongside brands that people love and impact our popular culture on a daily basis.

The students who chose to come to these schools have an interest in what we do, and we have a vested interest in keeping them engaged, sharing the excitement of our field and sharing our experiences. They matter more than ever—either as our future communications colleagues or our future customer population—and the more we can connect with them now, the better we will all be for it.

Chris Weil (@chrisweil) is the CEO of Momentum Worldwide; he sits on the 4A’s board of directors and serves as chairman of the 4A’s High School Initiative Advisory Board.

12869: Is GumboLive Mumbo Jumbo?

Adweek reported on GumboLive, an organized effort to recruit outsider talent created by Momentum Worldwide in New Orleans. Given that Gumbo has strong connections to Black culture—and New Orleans has a large Black population—it would be interesting to learn if the initiative has diversity-related goals. Based on the accompanying photograph depicted above, GumboLive appears to be an exclusive stew.

To Attract Outsider Talent, One Agency Cooked Up a New Approach in New Orleans

GumboLive looks to break the recruiting cycle

By Gabriel Beltrone

Before Nate Sutter worked in advertising, he was a professional yo-yo-er. Sponsored by Duncan Yo-Yo, he traveled the country performing tricks at toy stores, children’s hospitals and schools. He then spent a year and a half apprenticing as a body-piercing artist, and after that worked as a bartender in New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood. That is where, in 2012, he met someone from GumboLive, a creative think tank that had recently opened in town.

An ad job sounded interesting, recalls Sutter, 27, “so I just applied.” Sutter’s twisting career path represents just the kind of unconventional background GumboLive was designed to attract. Owned by Interpublic Group’s Momentum Worldwide, the initiative has quietly operated for the past three years with the mission of drawing fresh, millennial talent from beyond conventional sources like portfolio schools.

“The market is changing so dramatically if you look at how we as marketers and advertisers communicate … but if you look at agencies, the way we recruit is still pretty much the same way it’s always been,” says Chris Weil, CEO of Momentum. “We trade people back and forth from agency to agency. And then when we need some new talent, we hire somebody, a junior copywriter or a junior account person, and we put them on a small account in the corner and then have them fight their way up.”

As chairman of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) from 2012 to 2014, Weil was involved with talent research at both the trade group and Momentum, putting him in a prime position to diagnose why more people don’t put advertising at the top of the list when picking a career path. “Part of it is just the pure pressure or the monotony as you come up,” he says. “You’re jamming it out and trying to bill the hours so that you can then move up and get to the point of what this industry is all about, which is creativity and ideas.”

GumboLive has turned that problem on its head. Staffers don’t have to worry about time sheets or account management. Instead, they focus on cranking out big-picture ideas on a wide range of fast-turnaround briefs for brands forwarded on from Momentum and sometimes its sibling agencies. “It could be anybody from Coca-Cola to American Express to United Airlines,” notes Weil. “And the client may not even know that these guys are working on it.”

Momentum isn’t the only agency going outside the industry for talent. In 2011, 72andSunny launched 72U, a 12-week creative residency designed for non-ad professionals (recent participants included an architect, an audio engineer and a Ph.D. who’d studied gender roles in remote fishing villages in Spain). The agency has gone on to hire 21 full-time staffers and six freelancers out of the program’s 48 graduates. Maria Scileppi, 72U’s director, says the larger mission is to help participants grow creatively and professionally, emphasizing collaboration, experimentation and “creating a safe place” for what she calls, affectionately, “wonderful weirdos.”

GumboLive’s 15 or so staffers (who get “competitive compensation,” according to Momentum) tend to rotate on 18- to 24-month cycles—though three years in, Sutter is the notable exception. In addition to being an ideation resource for the entire Momentum network (Weil recalls one quarter in which they turned around 85 briefs), GumboLive staffers are plugged firmly into its new-business machine. Sometimes, that means producing spec ideas to pitch to clients. Others, it means Momentum execs fly down to New Orleans for blue-sky brainstorming sessions. Prospective clients can buy sessions, too. New York-based Westfield Corp., which operates shopping centers in eight states, bought one, reports Weil, “and they’re a client now.”

To be fair, GumboLive doesn’t discriminate against those with formal ad training or experience—the current class includes a couple of art directors and Miami Ad School grads. But it does skew toward the eclectic. To land his job there, Sutter cooked up an elaborate sample strategy to rebrand a wine company around Gen Y consumers. A colleague, Ben Johnson, 26, joined the shop this past May after bootstrapping Big Charity, a feature-length documentary about the controversial closing of Charity Hospital following Hurricane Katrina. One of three co-producers on the film, Johnson also composed the score. Earlier, he worked on HBO’s Treme for two seasons, helping source, sign and manage musicians.

And before she landed at GumboLive in March of this year, Sophia Osella, 24, studied philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis, where she produced a concert series featuring musicians like Rosanne Cash at Elvis Presley’s pre-Graceland residence, which is owned by the school. Osella thought she would end up in politics, law or video production, but now hopes to pursue a career in market research.

As for GumboLive’s first class (2012-14), half moved on to jobs in the industry. Call it millennial wanderlust, but Sutter—even with his boss, GumboLive managing director and former NBC integrations exec Ann Egelhoff, sitting in on this telephone interview—won’t commit to the advertising business for the long haul. “Totally, totally something I’m considering,” he says. “I feel it’s a field where there’s a lot of really good work to be done.”