The LinkedIn post depicted above memorializes J. Walter Thompson, the iconic White advertising agency that will officially become history—along with Y&R and Wunderman—as WPP merges the firms under the VML masthead.
Advertising Age also commemorated “three historic agency names” being retired from the Adland roster.
This is not a case of cancel culture; rather, it’s corporate cancel culture. Although it didn’t help that the White advertising agencies were culturally clueless too.
Advertising Age published a perspective by Michael Farmer, author of Madison Avenue Manslaughter, who argued that WPP must address its addiction to cost reduction. Farmer presents an interesting argument; unfortunately, there are no 12-Step programs for what’s ailing adland.
The White holding company business model is based on cost reduction, and dinosaurs like WPP have arguably overdosed on the compulsivity. Keep in mind that WPP was founded by a narcissistic bean counter. Iconic Adman Jay Chiat asked, “How big can we get before we get bad?” WPP Creator Sir Martin Sorrell seemed to ask, “How cheap can we get before we get bad?” And Sorrell’s grand invention has been answering the question for longer than anyone cares to admit.
WPP fueled the commoditization of creativity, rendering White advertising agencies generic and interchangeable. Plus, greater cost savings are promised to anyone selecting a full plate from the company buffet—and if you don’t like anything on the menu, we’ll prepare a dedicated dish of bland talent. Clients came to realize they could cook up their own in-house units too. Additionally, serving everything as price-based Extra Value Meals opened the competition to anyone with access to basic production utensils.
WPP CEO Mark Read and Sorrell appear to be overeaters of their own corporate cuisine, stone-cold procurement addicts in deep denial. So Farmer’s attempt to stage an intervention is a waste of time and resources.
Opinion: WPP’s addiction to cost reduction needs to change
Recent agency mergers focus on the wrong problem, argues veteran agency consultant
By Michael Farmer
Does anyone seriously believe that the WPP-led mergers of VML with Y&R (creating the eyesore VMLY&R) and of Wunderman with J. Walter Thompson (now Wunderman Thompson) are strategic moves that will restore WPP’s growth, profitability and share price performance? These mergers are mostly a continuation of the agency cost-reduction activities practiced by WPP since 1986, when it bought the underperforming J. Walter Thompson.
Mark Read inherited a difficult situation after the departure of Martin Sorrell. WPP’s growth and profitability had already sagged in 2017 and 2018, causing a serious decline in its share price. It’s understandable that Read needed some “quick hits” to fix his profit problem. Agency mergers to cut overhead and senior management costs must have seemed obvious, and they could be disguised to look “strategic.”
However, these mergers / cost reductions focus on the wrong problem. What’s really killing agencies and holding companies is the declining level of agency fees and billing rates, and the uncontrolled growth of agency workloads. These are “price problems” rather than “cost problems,” and they are not currently being addressed by agency CEOs.
Up to 2005 or so, most creative ad agencies were “fat” with resources. This was a hangover from the media commission days, when agency income was astronomically high relative to the amount of creative work that needed to be done. The big creative agencies could “staff up to the gills,” in the words of one former agency CEO, and ensure that they had more than enough people to do “anything and everything” for their clients. They never needed to worry about counting the amount of work they were doing; they could handle anything.
Holding companies acquired agencies under these conditions, and they began to squeeze agency staffing every year so that profit margins could widen. Agency squeezing was the basis for the growth of holding company margins from 5% in the ‘80s to the 15-20% levels expected today.
Once fee-based remuneration replaced media commissions, though, and agency fees were in the hands of fee-cutters from finance or procurement, agencies had to downsize even faster every year, getting rid of surplus headcounts.
After 2005, though, with the introduction of digital (and later, social) media, agency Scopes of Work grew more rapidly despite fee cuts, and agencies were out of surplus resources. Agencies continued to cut their staffs, though, failing to use growing Scopes of Work as the new basis for negotiating fees. They didn’t document the work they were doing, client by client. They had never done it in the past; why should they do it now?
I know of few holding companies today who have agencies who plan, document and measure their Scopes of Work in a uniform manner—and have a methodology to negotiate fees based on the amount of work they do. It’s a disgraceful oversight—fees and Scopes are left in the hands of clients. Procurement tells agencies what fees they are prepared to pay, at what billing rates, and marketing piles on unplanned creative work in the hope that something will happen to rekindle brand growth.
If Mark Read wants to make an enduring long-term impact at WPP, he needs to refocus his agencies on “getting paid for all the work they do” at appropriate rates. This will require WPP agencies to engage in the tedious, routine exercise of planning, documenting and measuring the work they do, client by client, with a uniform agency-wide system, and using this information to plan for client brand growth and negotiate annual fees. Thus far, agency CEOs have shown a distain to initiate this nitty-gritty work, strategic though it might be. Instead, CEOs focus on getting new clients to replace the ones that they so routinely lose.
It will take some real WPP muscle to redirect agency CEOs to get their agencies to take control of fees and Scopes of Work. Is this on the CEOs’ agendas for VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson? I hope so. The price problem needs to be solved.
SOW management is hard to do, but it reaps long-term benefits. Today’s apparent strategy, though—merging agencies to get rid of overhead and top management costs—has no long-term future unless it is coupled with serious efforts to regain control of fees and workloads.
Michael Farmer is chairman and CEO of Farmer & Co., a firm that works with global agencies and their clients to improve management disciplines and brand performance. He is also author of “Madison Avenue Manslaughter.”
Advertising Age reported WPP CEO Mark Read unveiled a turnaround scheme for the White holding company that includes a shiny new logo and dumping 2,500 employees over three years. Maybe the dots in the logo represent each redundant worker. Read proclaimed WPP would become a “creative transformation” company. Okay, but WPP is really the original “creative deformation” company. That is, through constant takeovers, clumsy mergers and dedicated dumpsters, the White holding company set the standard for the commoditization of creativity. A WPP statement admitted the place has become “too unwieldy, with too much duplication”—which translates to generic value between sister shops and even rival White holding companies. Read would be hard-pressed to explain how the arranged marriages that hooked up VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson will lead to transformative creativity. Besides, Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun already positioned his White holding company as being “the market leader in marketing and business transformation.” Sorry, Read isn’t transforming—rather, he’s just downsizing a dinosaur.
WPP unveils three-year turnaround plan
The holding company plans staff cuts, investment in creative leadership and fewer brands
By Megan Graham
The WPP of the future will have fewer companies; a structure more focused on what clients want rather than off-the-shelf offerings; and be more heavily invested in creativity, tech and talent. The holding company will also have a slimmed-down workforce. WPP expects to reduce jobs by 2,500 over three years from its current global count of 134,000 people. And there is a new holding company logo to top it all off.
The holding company unveiled its turnaround plan to investors and analysts on Tuesday in London and announced its intention to become a “creative transformation” company as it tries to address its underperformance. WPP says it will invest an incremental £15 million a year in creative leadership in each of the next three years, with a particular focus on the U.S.
WPP CEO Mark Read said the new positioning has already helped the holding company notch new business, including Volkswagen’s creative account in North America. Read was joined by other WPP leaders and clients in discussing its plans to strengthen its offerings in the areas of communications, experience, commerce and technology. The goal is to simplify a holding company that has become “too unwieldy, with too much duplication,” WPP said in a statement.
WPP discussed a lengthy to-do list, but some analysts felt it could have been bolder.
“We give a cautious welcome to the new strategy announced this morning but feel it could have been more ambitious and wide-ranging,” Liberum analysts wrote in a research note Tuesday. The note added that WPP could have targeted more cost savings. “Our view is they could have done more here—we thought £500m [per year] was a reasonable figure (with £500m of restructuring costs) based on a 5% reduction in the staff numbers and property savings.”
WPP anticipates spending £300 million in the next three years on actions like integrating companies like VML and Y&R or Wunderman and JWT; disposing or cutting down underperforming businesses; closing “unsustainable operations”; establishing a “consistent shared service infrastructure” for 30 countries; and further developing co-location, or putting employees onsite with clients. The company says it expects annual savings from those actions to total £275 million by the end of 2021.
Though the company spoke of its plans to have fewer, but stronger, companies within its walls, Read has said no other major agency network mergers are in the works for now.
The holding company is also trying to lean into trends affecting the agency business, like its efforts to co-locate agency talent inside clients as some marketers are seeking more in-house work. That kind of effort makes WPP “collaborative” instead of “combative,” says chief client officer Lindsay Pattison.
Pattison added that WPP shops are finding ways to create deeper relationships with clients beyond traditional communications—for instance, she says WPP worked with Unilever to co-create products like a “Day2” dry-wash spray for clothes. She says that product idea came from an insight from Kantar.
Campaign spotlighted The Home Office’s “Forced Marriage” campaign by FCB Inferno. Hey, adland shouldn’t be speaking out against forced marriage with a history of consummating unholy unions like VMLY&R, Wunderman Thompson and the mother of all creepy couplings, Draftfcb.
Campaign reported Wunderman suspended ECD Abi Ellis, pending an official investigation for undisclosed reasons. Plus, new VMLY&R CEO Jon Sharpe bailed out while undergoing a disciplinary investigation for undisclosed reasons—although Sharpe remarked, “I have resigned from VMLY&R to pursue new opportunities. I strenuously deny the reports received and have vigorously defended myself against them.” Add the Ogilvy UK redundancy programme, and it’s safe to declare WPP presents perhaps the most diverse examples of dismissals of any single organisation. For Mark Read, CEO stands for Chief Executive Obliterator.
Campaign published a report—Brutal simplifier: the VML and Y&R merger—detailing the cold and corporate combining of crappy companies in the WPP global outhouse. The story’s copy is not nearly as outrageous as the accompanying photographs. The first image (above) displays WPP CEO Mark Read posing in an oh-so-hip studio setting. It’s sad how White holding company CEOs view themselves as celebrity rock stars. Campaign is positioning Read as a simplifier? Simpleton would be more accurate. Meanwhile, the second image (below) presents the new leadership at VMLY&R. For an agency that gained certification from The 3% Movement and once employed a Director of Inclusion and Cultural Resonance, the fresh honchos appear to be stereotypically and predominately male and White.
Advertising Age reported VMLY&R Director of Inclusion and Cultural Resonance God-Is Rivera will join Twitter as Global Director of Culture and Community. The lengthy job titles make it tough to tweet a suitable announcement in 140 characters.
“Her efforts will live on and thrive,” said VMLY&R Global CEO Jon Cook, viewing Rivera’s departure as an opportunity to evolve her role. “The replacement could come in all sorts of forms. I’m excited about the possibilities. What God-is and all the teams around her have created give us so many options on what’s next.” Yes, the mashup of one of the first White advertising agencies to gain certification from The 3% Movement and the White advertising agency responsible for “A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste” should make for a diversity and inclusion breakthrough in adland. Then again, the new brand experience shop just lost a minority and a woman—a double whammy—which technically offsets any alleged progress.
God-is Rivera departing VMLY&R to join Twitter
By Megan Graham
God-is Rivera is leaving WPP agency VMLY&R to join Twitter as its global director of culture and community, a new role at the company.
Rivera — herself a prolific tweeter with an impressive command of GIF reactions — will be responsible for ensuring Twitter’s campaigns and programs are “connective, inclusive and reflective” of communities it serves, Twitter said in a statement. She’ll also be working on relationships and programs with outside individuals and organizations — projects like #HereWeAre, which kicked off early this year at CES after the tech conference had not featured any solo female keynotes.
The departure comes a month after WPP merged VML with sibling shop Y&R.
Bronx native Rivera joined VML in 2016 in a social media strategy role (she’s also worked at iCrossing and Austin-based T3), but after trying to get her agency to talk more openly about issues of inclusion and diversity, her role eventually evolved into the director of inclusion and cultural resonance. She’s been a frequent speaker at industry events on those topics.
Rivera told Ad Age she’s had a relationship with Twitter for some time; she took part in a panel on #BlackTwitter at Advertising Week NYC last year and spoke at Twitter’s #OneTeam summit this summer.
She says the new gig is somewhat of a “graduation” of what she was doing before.
“I feel that although the challenges are much bigger in scale, [Twitter has] a larger platform to address them,” she says.
Rivera describes her new role as an interaction between brand communications and experiential — “so that we can bring the energy of Twitter communities and their voices both on and off the platform,” she says. She hopes to use that to connect with communities on topics like voting or the Flint water crisis.
VMLY&R global CEO Jon Cook says Rivera “selflessly advanced a progressive mindset and approach to belongingness and personal expression to the benefit of VMLY&R and our entire industry.”
“Her efforts will live on and thrive,” he says. Cook says the agency will use her departure as a chance to doing a next evolution of the role. “The replacement could come in all sorts of forms. I’m excited about the possibilities. What God-is and all the teams around her have created give us so many options on what’s next.”
Rivera adds that her appointment is a reminder that tech companies can look to people from different industries or who have different backgrounds, not just those already working in the sector. “I’m really proud to be a black woman leading this effort at Twitter,” she says.
Mark Read succeeding Sir Martin Sorrell is feeling like what you might imagine if Vice President Mike Pence assumed control following a resignation by President Donald Trump. Unfortunately, Read’s bizarro scenario is not imaginary—it’s actually a living nightmare for the entire industry.
The engineering of mergers between failing White advertising agencies—layered with healthcare marketing’s creativity-deficient crudeness—produces quite a global mound of shit. Read could become the Victor Frankenstein of adland. Or the Minny of Madison Avenue. Oh, it doesn’t help that revenue is going down the toilet too.
And now, Read is grafting cultural cluelessness to the monstrosity. At a recent Wacl soiree, Read pontificated on divertsity by declaring, “Logically, men and women are equally talented, [so] we should be 50% of the workforce [being made up of women] all the way through. There is a business opportunity for WPP. If we lead on this, we can attract the best talent, which is a business imperative.” Okay, but shouldn’t the logic be extended to presenting percentages for racial and ethnic representation? Can we add some BAME to the pie?
Or maybe Read thinks WPP workers already “represent perhaps the most diverse example of diversity of any single organisation.” More likely, Read has never given such issues a thought at all.
Meanwhile, Sorrell recently claimed he held no resentment toward his former employer/creation and remarked, “The best form of revenge would be building a significant and successful new-era, new-format, new-approach agency.” In other words, Read is stuck holding the old-era, old-format, old-approach fecal matter in his hands. Yet the barely-two-month-old WPP CEO seems unqualified, unwilling and unable to accept the impossibility of turning turds to titanium.
The forecast calls for severe shitstorms.
Adweek reported PepsiCo is dumping WPP’s VMLY&R ASAP. The former VML served as digital agency for Gatorade and Tropicana for over 8 and 4 years, respectively. Soon-to-be-fired staffers will need Gatorade’s electrolyte-replacing benefits when required to quickly pack their belongings and hurriedly vacate their cubicles. The geniuses behind the recent merger likely aren’t sweating, so they’ll just sip Tropicana juices in their safe offices. No word yet on where the businesses might shift. Omnicom is probably checking to see if Fathom Communications is available.
PepsiCo to End Its Relationship With WPP’s VMLY&R After More Than 8 Years
Agency ran digital and social for Gatorade and Tropicana
By Patrick Coffee
PepsiCo has moved to end its relationship with VMLY&R after eight and a half years, a client spokesperson confirmed today.
The WPP-owned agency has counted Gatorade and Tropicana digital as two of the larger accounts run out of its Kansas City, Kan. headquarters.
“Gatorade and digital agency of record VML have enjoyed a successful relationship over the past eight and a half years (Tropicana for four and a half years),” the Pepsi representative wrote.
She also said the company is “proud of our work together and the business results it has achieved” but has “agreed to part ways,” adding: “As we look ahead to 2019, we will be evaluating a differentiated model within the digital space. The companies will begin to transition work but continue to work together throughout the remainder of 2018. We wish VML continued future success.”
An agency spokesperson declined to comment and referred to the client. According to multiple parties close to the business, VML executives alerted employees to the change on Tuesday morning.
The news comes approximately two weeks after WPP announced that VML would merge with the more traditional creative network Y&R to form VMLY&R in the first major move made by incoming holding company CEO Mark Read.
It is unclear at this time what the “differentiated model” will entail and where the work in question will go. Sources did confirm, however, that it will not be handled by the two primary brands’ agencies of record, TBWA\Chiat\Day and BBDO.
Representatives for both Omnicom shops declined to comment.
TBWA\Chiat\Day handled the digital work on Gatorade from 2008 until 2010, when PepsiCo went outside its Omnicom stable to award the business to VML. The agency reportedly beat out Tribal DDB, Organic, Huge and Publicis Groupe’s recently-shuttered Odopod in a competitive review.
As noted in the quote above, the shop then added digital creative duties for Tropicana to its client roster in 2014, later picking up secondary beverage brands Brisk Tea and Propel.
Pepsi has been moving much of its social media work in-house over the past two years. In late October 2016, Adweek reported that the company would be handling social for its namesake brand internally, and Pepsi confirmed the news two weeks later.
Advertising Age reported on the WPP move to merge VML and Y&R, demonstrating quite clearly that WPP CEO Mark Read is as big an asshole as Sir Martin Sorrell. With one decision, two companies are being hurled into chaos, rendering employees helpless and hopeless over their immediate fates. Firings have already happened, and more ruthless reorganizations, rejiggering and releases are guaranteed. Sorrell routinely argued there’s no such thing as a hostile takeover, insisting that people are not adversely affected by mergers. Sorry, but thanks to Sorrell, hostile takeovers and friendly integrations lead to downright damnation. Additionally, more unemployed White people increase the difficulty for racial and ethnic minorities to land jobs—meaning Y&R is indirectly water-bombing people of color again.
WPP is merging Y&R with VML, forming VMLY&R
By Megan Graham
WPP’s new CEO Mark Read didn’t take long to make his first big move: The holding company is officially merging Y&R with VML.
VML global chief executive officer Jon Cook will lead the new agency, which will be called by an alphabet soup of letters: VMLY&R. WPP says the shop will be a “contemporary, fully integrated digital and creative offering to clients on a global scale.” David Sable, former global CEO of Y&R, will continue as non-executive chairman and transition into a new role within WPP.
In a statement, Read said the new shop “will be a powerful brand experience offering and a core agency brand for WPP. VML and Y&R have distinct and complementary strengths spanning creative, technology and data services that make them a perfect match.”
He added: “This is an important step as we build a new, simpler WPP that provides clients with a fully integrated offering and easy access to our wealth of talent and resources.”
The combined agency will include more than 7,000 people, WPP says, and should be operating by early 2019.
Cook tells Ad Age that the merger makes sense because the agencies have been related at WPP—the holding company’s structure had VML sitting within a Y&R network—and worked together for years, often sharing clients and geographies. He said the shops had complementary skills, and that leadership saw the combination of brand experience and brand advertising as a powerful one.
The move puts Y&R—a legacy shop which saw worldwide revenue drop 3 percent from $1.16 billion in 2016 to $1.13 billion in 2017, according to Ad Age Datacenter estimates—with VML, which has been a consistent star performer in the network.
Big legacy shops often get flack for being multi-layered and slow. Asked how the combined agency would stay agile, Cook said “VML is probably a lot bigger than people think” but has been able to maintain its company culture as it grew.
“We’ve taken a company that started in Kansas City, Missouri 25 years ago and scaled that to a global company,” he says. “That gives me a ton of confidence about what it takes to scale culture and personality and agility and a client-first mindset.”
“I think the world needs agencies with personality,” he adds.
The tasks at hand include bringing the expanded offerings to its clients and taking the coming months to get input and figure out what’s next, according to Cook. “Take our time, think through what’s right, be careful, be thorough … I have really appreciated how Mark [Read] is doing that at WPP.”
VML’s global chief creative, Debbi Vandeven, will take on the role of global chief creative at the combined agency. VML President Eric Campbell will be the combined agency’s global president. Jason Xenopoulos, who ran VML in South Africa, will lead the combined office in New York.
VMLY&R will not have a single headquarters, according to Cook, but major offices in cities like New York, London, Sao Paolo, Sydney and Kansas City. “I love the idea of VMLY&R being a mindset, not a physical building somewhere,” he says.
In WPP’s second quarter earnings call earlier this month, Read — who was named CEO of the holding company earlier this month, replacing Martin Sorrell — spoke about strengthening the holding company’s creative agencies, saying, “We need to have stronger businesses with better work, better strategy, better reputations as well as ensure that those companies have the capabilities that they need to grow.”
Kansas City, Missouri-based VML, which was founded in 1992 by John Valentine, Scott McCormick and Craig Ligibel (hence the letters), joined WPP in 2001. The shop, known for strong digital chops, saw worldwide revenue grow 3.6 percent from $390 million in 2016 to $404 million in 2017, according to Ad Age Datacenter estimates. At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity last year, VML’s “#NuggsForCarter” work for Wendy’s scored three Lions. In addition to Wendy’s, VML’s clients include Kraft Heinz and the United Nations.
A year ago, VML absorbed sibling WPP agency Rockfish, a digital innovation shop with e-commerce expertise that generated $70 million in revenue in 2016, according to the Ad Age Datacenter. VML told Ad Age earlier this year it planned to put more of an emphasis on artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality in 2018.
Y&R, a stalwart among WPP’s creative agencies, was founded in 1923 by John Orr Young and Raymond Rubicam, who left N.W. Ayer & Son, Philadelphia, to open their own shop. In 1980, Y&R was the world’s largest agency, then went public in 1998. The agency was acquired by WPP in 2000. Among its clients are Amtrak, which was announced last week, Office Depot and computer technology company Dell.
The agencies being combined have markedly different pedigrees, says Avi Dan, founder of Avidan Strategies.
“VML’s culture is midwestern and youthful—energetic, no-nonsense and friendly. Y&R is more of a gray-haired aristocrat a bit past his prime,” Dan says. “By putting the two together they’re hoping that the result will be like in the movie ‘The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button,’” he says, referring to the film in which a man ages in reverse.
Dan, who worked at Y&R in the late 80’s and early 90s, says the agency was once a shining star, with a storied history that includes bringing on George Gallup from Northwestern University to start the first advertising agency research department in 1932. “It really was a special place for a lot of us that worked there,” he says.
MediaPost reported Y&R is the new AOR for Miss America. “Miss America is upending a 97-year-old brand as an empowering platform during a cultural tipping point,” claimed Y&R North America Chief Creative Officer Leslie Sims. “We’re excited to be working with the organization’s new leadership as champions of dimensional and fierce women. As advertisers, we should be creating content that women want to watch, share and produce. And content that raises up talented, badass women.” Such bravado sounds like bullshit when coming from a Time’s Up/Advertising-signing executive representing an industry where White women are allegedly underpaid, underrepresented and overwhelmed by sexual harassers. What’s next? Will Y&R rainmakers land the NAACP Awards account?
Miss America Crowns Y&R AOR
By Larissa Faw
Miss America is appointing Y&R as its new AOR as the organization undergoes a significant rebranding that will eliminate the swimsuit competition as well as pivot away from judging women based on their appearance.
This was an informal review and there was no incumbent agency.
“Miss America is upending a 97-year-old brand as an empowering platform during a cultural tipping point,” stated Leslie Sims, chief creative officer, Y&R North America. “We’re excited to be working with the organization’s new leadership as champions of dimensional and fierce women. As advertisers, we should be creating content that women want to watch, share and produce. And content that raises up talented, badass women.”
Y&R is currently working with Miss America to develop a new logo as well as a more thorough makeover to convey that the group isn’t merely a pageant. The group spent a mere $33,000 on advertising last year, according to Kantar Media.
Y&R’s appointment follows last year’s scandal in which Miss America overhauled its board after CEO Sam Haskell was shown making misogynistic remarks about former contestants. Former Miss America Gretchen Carlson was elevated to chairman of the board, along with three previous winners. This new leadership team suggested today’s changes as a way to reimagine their brand and competition for a new generation of female leaders.
Now, with Y&R, these leaders will develop messaging focused on scholarship, social impact, talent, and empowerment. ”We’re experiencing a cultural revolution in our country with women finding the courage to stand up and have their voices heard on many issues,” stated Carlson. “Miss America is proud to evolve as an organization and join this empowerment movement.”
Y&R in Mexico is responsible for this Save the Children campaign, imploring people to not let kids’ dreams die. But the dreams seem somewhat sexist—why can’t girls dream of being firefighters and astronauts?
Adweek reported Young & Rubicam Group is launching PowerOn, a program designed to help parents and caregivers transition back into the workforce after taking time off to focus on family matters. The exclusive initiative will probably most benefit White women. Meanwhile, Y&R will continue to douse diversity related to Blacks and people of color.
Young & Rubicam Is Starting a Program to Help Parents and Caregivers Re-enter the Workforce
PowerOn is for people who’ve left to focus on family
By Erik Oster
Young & Rubicam Group is offering full-time parents and caregivers a way to ease back into the workforce.
The agency on Tuesday announced the launch of its own career reboot program called PowerOn. In a statement, Y&R said the training program aims to “reclaim the untapped talent and recruitment potential” of those facing the challenges of re-entering the workforce.
“It’s time for our industry to embrace this untapped pool of talent—so often the decision to depart from the workforce to focus on family or child care unfairly impedes opportunities for growth down the line,” said Young & Rubicam Group chief of talent and operations Madeline Park in a statement. “But we know these candidates offer an incredible skill set, life experience, diverse points of view and much more.”
The challenges of being a parent in the advertising industry are widely known. Stringent parental leave policies are still a problem at ad agencies, even as progress has been made in recent years. In 2016, 11 agencies formed Pledge Parental Leave to implement a system across agencies and have since added over two dozen more shops. Another problem in the industry, talent retention, remains persistent, but programs like PowerOn could give agencies a way to keep millennial parents and other caregivers.
A 12-week training program, PowerOn is open to men and women who have left the industry to focus on parenting or caregiving and offers training, resources and hands-on experience to facilitate the transition back. Teams of mentors will support PowerOn participants as they make their way through the program’s professional workshops, speakers series, skills development and knowledge training sessions with the goal of placing participants in full-time positions upon completion.
The PowerOn program starts Jan. 18 and operates out of Y&R’s New York office. Participants include Y&R, Wunderman, WPP Health and Wellness companies, Red Fuse, Sudler & Hennessey, Grey Healthcare and Hogarth. Applications are open through Dec. 1.
This Greenpeace campaign from Y&R in Namibia declares, “Trash Shouldn’t Define Our Culture.” Can’t help but notice a lot of the depicted trash is rooted in Western culture. Oh, and Y&R colonizing Namibia is pretty peculiar too, given the White advertising agency’s history and culture of trashing Blacks.
Y&R in Chile seems to believe that liquor is required to handle even mundane daily milestones. Given the serious problem of alcoholism in Chile, this campaign is wildly irresponsible and thoroughly reprehensible.
Campaign published “How to have a killer career without killing yourself” by recently retired Phelps Chief Creative Officer Howie Cohen—and the piece included a jokey photo of a skeleton at a workstation (depicted above). Given the issue of adpeople dying on the job, this all seems quite insensitive.
Adweek saluted the Ad Council for 75 years of churning out PSAs for social change. Yet the philanthropic propaganda has featured a fair share of cultural cluelessness over the decades. Highlights include:
• Casting an Italian American to play an iconic Native American weeping over litter was a garbage move.
• Young & Rubicam, the White advertising agency that hatched “A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste” for the United Negro College Fund, also water-bombed Black protestors in 1966.
• “Love Has No Labels” advocates for love and inclusion, brought to you by R/GA, which can be labeled as a stereotypical White advertising agency that loves to include exotic dancers at company parties.
The Ad Council touts itself as a revolutionary champion for social change, yet its partnership with White advertising agencies perpetuates discriminatory exclusivity and stymies actual progress.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Y&R may have won the 2020 U.S. Census account by underbidding rival White advertising agencies by as much as 50%. Hey, the $14 million bid is a mere fraction of WPP Overlord Sir Martin Sorrell’s take-home pay—in fact, it’s a fraction of his annual bonus money. The lowball tactic also means any minority firms inevitably partnering with Y&R will receive even fewer crumbs than normal.
WPP’s Y&R Bid Far Lower Than Rivals for U.S. Census Account
Creative agency won coveted three-year deal with $14 million bid
By Alexandra Bruell
When WPP ’s Y&R announced earlier this year it had won the coveted U.S. Census account, industry executives speculated that the creative agency had come in with a low bid.
Now it’s becoming clear just how low its price was.
A team led by Y&R submitted a proposal for the three-year deal that would cost the government agency about $14 million, far lower than the bids submitted by four other players, which ranged from roughly $25 million to over $30 million, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Census, which is readying a big advertising, media and public relations campaign in its effort to collect data on U.S. citizens for its 2020 report, is estimating a total budget of $415 million to cover its integrated communications contract, according to request for proposals agencies received.
The project will include traditional and digital advertising, media buying, public relations, social media and research, and data and analytics, among other elements.
Y&R declined to comment.
According to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that ranked agency fee proposals by price, Y&R’s team came in the least expensive, followed by teams led by Interpublic Group’s creative shop FCB, Omnicom Group’s DDB, and IPG-owned McCann World Group, as well an Accenture-led team that included people from creative shop Droga5.
Y&R was at the top of the list on the “technical” ranking, a measure of how well agencies could perform the work, according to the document and people close to the process.
Y&R’s low bid raised competitors’ eyebrows, the people said. Agencies often take on business at a discounted rate if they’re looking to create momentum during a slow period, or to do business with a sexy brand. Typically, however, the low bid is only incrementally lower than the others, according to people familiar with agency reviews.
Still, with pricing pressure mounting—from client procurement departments asking agencies to wait longer for payment, to electronic auctions asking agencies to bid down their rates—some agency executives wonder if lowball bidding will become more commonplace.
“Agencies low-bid things all the time, but half as much is pretty drastic,” said Casey Burnett, founder of the agency search consultancy The Burnett Collective. “Sometimes it’s because the agency wants the business as a marque account,” while other times “it’s simply because they didn’t understand the [scope of work]. Sometimes they hope to convince the client to pay more later.”
It’s not immediately clear what inspired Y&R’s bid, or how it plans on structuring the Census account. It’s possible the agency has set up a cost structure that will allow healthy profit margins, despite its relatively low rate.
Y&R, which is no stranger to long-term government contracts, won the multi-year Navy ad contract last year.
For its latest win, the WPP shop will need to pull in resources from various agencies and engage in a hands-on effort that’s unique to the Census. Promoting the Census requires reaching people from various cultures and ethnic backgrounds, and using different media at a hyper-local level, from posters to flyers to mobile apps, according to people familiar with the account.
“Effective and strategic communications with many diverse audiences will be crucial, including everything from educating the public about the process to maximizing response rates,” according to the Census’s request for proposals.
An agency group that understands technology will also be crucial to the Census project, according to the RFP.
Y&R has been in talks with PwC about a partnership on the account, according to people familiar with the matter. Consulting firms like Accenture, Deloitte and PwC have been investing in digital marketing capabilities in the past few years and are now even moving into the creative business, hoping to pitch their technological know-how to marketers. Some ad agencies, meanwhile, have dipped their toes in consulting.
The Y&R team will also include support from WPP shops Burson-Marsteller, Maxus, Bravo, Wunderman and Hogarth, among others, said a spokesman from the U.S. Census. Y&R is also working with a number of small businesses that specialize in reaching niche groups, such as G&G Advertising, which is tasked with reaching American Indian and Alaska Native communities.
This LG campaign from Y&R in Brazil is extraordinarily heinous, sexist and… Hey, wait a minute—isn’t Gustavo Martinez working on projects in South America?
Advertising Age reported Y&R was picked to be the lead White advertising agency for the 2020 Census. No word yet on which minority shops might be tapped to receive Census crumbs—despite the original RFP stating that the winning agency must have access to “expertise and experience in communicating with and marketing to historically undercounted populations. These populations include such groups as African Americans/Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, American Indians and Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders.” Of course, the Census didn’t bother counting how the various groups are underrepresented in the halls of Y&R, and apparently doesn’t care that the agency is owned by a holding company based in the U.K. Only in America.
Y&R Tapped as Lead Agency for 2020 Census
WPP Shop Will Help Census Utilize ‘Emerging Technologies’ to Market Its Efforts
By Maureen Morrison
WPP’s Y&R has won the 2020 Census account after a review, according to people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. Census Bureau in late January issued a final RFP, with a projected completion sometime in August. Representatives for the Census, according to people familiar with the process, reached out this morning to agencies involved to let them know that Y&R won. As many as five agencies were finalists.
More than likely, a host of other agencies will be involved, handling media and multicultural marketing, among other disciplines. According to one person familiar with the review, agencies presented partner agencies and subcontractors in the review, though it was not immediately known what agencies would be working in tandem with Y&R.
Representatives for Y&R and the Census Bureau did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The bureau, for the next census, is looking to address marketing differently than it did for the 2010 Census, given how dramatically the media landscape has changed since then.
According to the RFP from January: “The communications industry has changed dramatically since the conduct of the 2010 Census, principally due to changes and advances in technology, communications mechanisms, and consumer expectations. The Internet, wireless technologies, and mobile personal devices have opened new communications channels and media that have empowered consumers with increased connectivity to marketers. The Census Bureau fully intends to harness these emerging technologies and channels as part of the 2020 Census Integrated Communications Contract.”
The RFP also said that “the total estimated value for the full lifecycle of this contract” is about $415 million. It wasn’t clear what the fee would be for the lead agency, or other agencies involved.
One of the Census Bureau’s biggest challenges for each census is getting people to respond—especially those in hard-to-count populations. The RFP said that the winning agency will need to have, either from a subcontractor or itself, “expertise and experience in communicating with and marketing to historically undercounted populations. These populations include such groups as African Americans/Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, American Indians and Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders.”
The RFP goes on to say that “racial and ethnic group is not the sole indicator of hard-to-count and non-respondent populations. They also tend to be characterized by renters, high unemployment, low education, low income, difficulty reading or writing in English, the young and mobile, the older population, and household crowding, among other factors.”
For the 2010 Census, more than a dozen agencies were contracted to handle the work. Interpublic’s FCB, then called DraftFCB, was the lead agency on the campaign, though other IPG shops were involved, including Asian-American shop IW Group and Jack Morton, an experiential agency. GlobalHue also played a role, creating work aimed at African-Americans.
