15509: Exclusive Clubs, Clubbing Inclusivity.

 

The Daily Mail published a lengthy report on the JWT sex discrimination lawsuit, where a group of White guys accused the White advertising agency of discriminating against them via pink slips. The story made multiple ‘Cancel Club’ references, yet ultimately confirmed that ‘Cancel Club’ gets clubbed and canceled by ‘Boys Club.’ Also clubbed in the report was JWT Creative Director Jo Wallace, who will probably seek solace at her supper club. And it all shows that even Fight Club can’t beat White Club.

 

EXCLUSIVE: ‘If I’d been a young, black, gay woman I’d have been ok’: Two men at ad agency JWT win sex discrimination case after gay female director vowed to ‘obliterate’ Mad Men reputation of being full of ‘white, straight men’

 

EXCLUSIVE: Chas Bayfield and Dave Jenner won a sex discrimination case against J. Walter Thompson (JWT)

 

• Jo Wallace was appointed as global creative director to help the company lose its ‘boys club’ reputation

 

• As well as Mr Bayfield & Mr Jenner, three other male workers were fired, with settlements agreed out of court

 

By Alyssa Guzman and Andrew Young and Tom Pyman

 

A creative worker at a top advertising agency today said he felt like he had ‘a target on my back’ when he was fired after a gay female director vowed to ‘obliterate’ the firm’s Mad Men reputation of being ‘full of white, British, straight men.’

 

Chas Bayfield and colleague Dave Jenner, who were among five men axed from J. Walter Thompson (JWT) after bosses ‘urgently’ wanted to address its poor gender pay gap, have expressed relief after winning a sex discrimination claim against the company.

 

A damning gender pay gap report had sent ‘shock waves’ through the firm as it highlighted there was a serious lack of female representation, a tribunal heard.

 

Female creative director Jo Wallace, 44, was appointed to help lose the company’s ‘Knightsbridge Boys Club’ reputation and jointly held a diversity conference called ‘Crisis: The Mother of All Change’.

 

Ms Wallace, who introduced herself as a gay woman, told the conference: ‘One thing we all agree on is that the reputation JWT once earnt — as being full of white, British, privileged [men] — has to be obliterated.’

 

When Mr Bayfield, who made the famous Blackcurrant Tango ‘St George’ ad, and Mr Jenner expressed ‘valid’ concerns over the safety of their jobs, bosses reacted ‘furiously’ and took it as a ‘challenge’ to their new diversity drive, then made them redundant.

 

Mr Bayfield told MailOnline today: ‘There is a part of me that feels guilty that these laws, that were put in place to protect minorities in the workplace as they should be, have protected a couple of middle-aged, straight, British men. But it is also right the judge found in our favour because it wasn’t right.

 

‘I definitely agreed that there had to be a way to address the diversity issues, but I don’t think it was gone about the right way.

 

‘I remember feeling like I just had a target on my back. I remember thinking, if I was a black 24-year-old woman I’d be fine. If I had been gay, even better.

 

‘But as a middle-aged white man, it felt like my job was in danger and that’s why we went to a lawyer.'

 

A spokesman for Mr Jenner today added that he hoped the judgment would ‘encourage more people to stand up to the ‘Cancel Club’.’

 

Wunderman Thompson, which merged with JWT — the spiritual successor of Madison Avenue, home to a series of advertising agencies that inspired Mad Men, told MailOnline it would be appealing the ruling.

 

Ms Wallace, who used to work for Saatchi & Saatchi and lives with her fiancée in a £1.2 million house in trendy east London, wrote in an article last year: ‘A hell of a lot of people are literally sleeping on the job when it comes to diversifying their creative department beyond white, pale, stale males.’

 

The pair were let go after a meeting with the company and were told to leave.

 

Companies can hire from under-represented communities, but cannot fire employees for race or discrimination.

 

Now the pair, who were behind some hugely successful TV adverts, have successfully sued Wunderman Thompson for sex discrimination.

 

Mr Bayfield and Mr Jenner are in line to receive compensation from Wunderman Thompson after winning claims of sex discrimination, victimisation, harassment and unfair dismissal.

 

They lost claims of age discrimination, race discrimination, and sexual orientation discrimination after the judge ruled they had no impact on their dismissal.

 

The complaint becomes a test case at a time when employers are trying to close gender wage gaps. JWT has one of the most unequal salary structures in the advertising industry, according to data released under government rules.

 

After the pay gap figures were published JWT implemented a plan to increase diversity through methods such as ‘unconscious bias training for staff’ and a ‘blind recruitment policy’ which would see details such as gender removed from job applications.

 

The male-dominated world of advertising is epitomised in the US TV drama Mad Men which portrays sharp-suited, smooth-tongued executives plying their trade on New York’s Madison Avenue in the 1960s.

 

Mr Bayfield today said since his dismissal he has struggled to find work and Mr Jenner has left advertising, adding that they have been perceived as ‘whistle-blowers’ in the industry.

 

The married father, now 54, of Cricklewood in London, said: ‘We were concerned about diversity and female and minority representation but we were also worried about our job safety — the word ‘obliterated’ is a powerful word.

 

‘The gender pay gap was mortifying for the company — because it was an awful gap — and their approach was to go gung-ho on who they perceived to be the enemy. They rigged up a kangaroo court and fired us.’

 

Mr Jenner’s lawyer told MailOnline: ‘There is nothing inclusive or productive about vilifying one group of people to lift up another.

 

‘As this decision demonstrates, there is nothing lawful about it either.

 

‘Hopefully the judgment will encourage more people to stand up to the ‘Cancel Club’ and rediscover their value as individuals in promoting a tolerant and all-inclusive society.’

 

Three other male creatives who were sacked settled out of court, Mr Bayfield said.

 

The complainant said today that his redundancy was a ‘tragic’ example of how the battle against discrimination was victimising ‘people who aren’t particularly vulnerable, like British men.’

 

In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, he said: ‘I feel very pleased at the result. I think the agency was believing it was doing the right thing and wanted to be seen to be diverse, and on the side of all the people who have been historically overlooked.

 

‘They had their shocking pay gap figures which were the worst in the whole industry. They wanted to so do something really quickly and there was this knee jerk reaction at a conference they spoke at.

 

‘But I felt very much that they were taking discrimination from one place and putting it in another place which was completely the wrong way to do it. There were so many other ways they could fix that problem.

 

‘I was fully on board with the notion that it was a problem which needed fixing and we do need to get more people from different cultures and different countries and more women in high positions.

 

‘I ended up speaking out, saying that the tone used in that talk actually makes it sound that you are going to fix the problem by getting rid of us — British straight men of a certain age.

 

‘That is really where it all kicked off and their response to that was really quite explosive, and two days later we were on a list to be made redundant.

 

‘I am very glad that the tribunal looked into all the background and detail, and saw what was going on. The agency was very, very angry because they thought we were opposed to their agenda which we weren’t. We were just getting clarity on, ‘Where does this put us?’

 

‘It’s tragic that the legislation which was put there to protect vulnerable people is now used against people who aren’t particularly vulnerable, like British men.’

 

He said that his former employers had six weeks to lodge an appeal if they felt the law was interpreted wrongly. But if there is no appeal, he expects the tribunal to rule on awarding payouts to him and Mr Jenner.

 

Mr Bayfield said he had ‘not worked a huge amount’ in the last three years and had ‘certainly never achieved the level he was at with JWT’.

 

He added: ‘Work has been quite scant, particularly through the pandemic.’

 

But he said he and his Australian-born wife Claire and their 12-year-old daughter were now preparing to emigrate in six weeks time to Hobart, Tasmania.

 

‘I know there are some very good job opportunities out there, so I am very excited about making a new start, away from all this.’

 

Mr Bayfeld said his decision to emigrate was partly due to him being made redundant, but he added: ‘When your wife is from Australia, it is always at the back of your mind that you might end up there. But it’s been massively accelerated by the absence of work over here.

 

‘My wife is an occupational therapist and is very employable anywhere, so she found a job very quickly.’

 

A judge ruled that JWT bosses unfairly got ‘rid’ of Mr Bayfield and Mr Jenner, 52 and 50 at the time, because it ‘immediately assisted the gender pay gap issue’.

 

The London Central tribunal heard both men are straight, white and British. Their work regularly received praise from colleagues and industry peers.

 

In April 2018, a gender pay gap report revealed there was a pay gap of 44.7 per cent.

 

Ms Wallace had been brought in five months earlier ‘on the need to shake up the creative team to ensure they were seen as experts in non-traditional advertising, and to lose the reputation as the ‘Knightsbridge boys club’.’

 

Ms Wallace, who has been described as a ‘fearless champion of female success’, held the ‘hard-hitting’ diversity presentation with executive creative director Lucas Peon in May 2018.

 

It caused ‘controversy’ when Ms Wallace said JWT’s reputation — ‘white, British, privileged, straight men creating traditional, above the line advertising’ — needed to be abolished.

 

Later, Mr Bayfield sent an email to a boss saying: ‘I found out recently JWT did a talk off site where it vowed to obliterate white, middle-class straight people from its creative department. There are a lot of very worried people down here.’

 

Mr Peon and Emma Hoyle, the company’s HR director, called a meeting with Mr Bayfield and Mr Jenner to discuss their concerns about job safety.

 

Though Mr Bayfield and Mr Jenner said they believe women and minorities should have a fair chance, they were angrily accused of challenging the diversity pledge.

 

Employment Judge Mark Emery said they were treated in such a hostile manner it amounted to ‘victimisation’.

 

Judge Emery said: ‘Both Ms Hoyle and Mr Peon were angry from the outset of the meeting, and it continued in this vein. Voices were raised by Mr Peon and Ms Hoyle, and Mr Bayfield and Mr Jenner were forced to defend their position.

 

‘Their explanations were not at the time accepted and their points of view were angrily dismissed. [There was a] failure to accept that they had any valid concerns about the presentation… their views were regarded as unacceptable.’

 

Within two days it had been decided that Mr Bayfield and Mr Jenner would lose their jobs to redundancies.

 

Mr Peon had unfairly made his mind up before even carrying out an assessment of other senior creatives to see who would be axed.

 

He claimed their performance was at fault, but the judge ruled the work never had concerns.

 

Judge Emery said: ‘We concluded there was a consensus amongst [the company’s] senior management team that Mr Bayfield and Mr Jenner had overstepped the mark with their comments in their emails and at the meeting, that there was anger at what [the company] considered a challenge to their plans on the gender pay gap issue.’

 

The judge added: ‘We considered that a significant factor in [the company’s bosses] minds at this time was the gender pay gap issue, and that a reason for dismissing Mr Bayfield and Mr Jenner was there would be an impact, both in terms of the figures, and by the prospect of having senior positions opening which could be filled by women.

 

‘We considered that this factor, their sex, was on the mind of [the company] when determining to dismiss them, an equal factor with that of the anger at their complaints.

 

‘This would immediately assist the gender pay gap issue within the creative team, it would rid the team of two creative directors who were because of their sex seen as resistant to change; also female creative directors were exactly what [the company] were seeking.’

 

A woman in a similar position would not have faced the same backlash, the judge added.

 

Adrian Scotland, partner at Judge Sykes Frixou, which represented them in the case, said: ‘We were always confident the Tribunal would find in our favour, but you take nothing for granted.

 

‘I am delighted for my clients. They are courageous human beings, having risked their careers to take on a global corporation with the reach and influence of WPP.

 

‘The experiences outlined in this case are sadly commonplace. It is a growing part of the work we do day-to-day.

 

‘Every good thing is vulnerable to corruption and with the billions poured into the diversity economy it should be no surprise that there are more and more bad actors appearing.

 

‘It is important that people feel able to question and challenge bad ideas, especially when they hide behind a benevolent cause.

 

‘There is nothing inclusive or productive about vilifying one group of people to lift up another. As this decision demonstrates, there is nothing lawful about it either.

 

Hopefully the judgment will encourage more people to stand up to the ‘Cancel Club’ and rediscover their value as individuals in promoting a tolerant and all-inclusive society.’

 

A spokesperson for Wunderman Thompson, which merged with JWT, said: ‘We will be appealing the tribunal’s ruling on events that took place within the J. Walter Thompson business in 2018.

 

‘We do not tolerate any form of discrimination or harassment and are committed to providing an inclusive workplace in which everyone is treated fairly.’

 

Wunderman Thompson told MailOnline: ‘No claim was brought against Jo Wallace in relation to the events that took place within the J. Walter Thompson business in 2018. She did not dismiss the claimants, and was not involved in the redundancy decision-making process.’

15508:VaynerX Rx For A Dose Of DE&I.

 

Campaign announced VaynerX—Gary Vaynerchuk’s empire—hired its first Chief Diversity Officer. Of course they did. The new executive will report directly to Vaynerchuk, developing a global DE&I heat shield, revamping hiring, retention and training programs and focusing on supplier diversity programs. Of course she will. The CDO and Vaynerchuk provided plenty of PR puffery, promoting the progressive plans they’ll perform. Of course they will.

 

VaynerX hires Vanessa Vining as chief diversity officer

 

She will oversee diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at the holding company.

 

By Alison Weissbrot

 

VaynerX, Gary Vaynerchuk’s holding company housing companies including VaynerMedia, The Sasha Group and Gallery Media Group, has hired Vanessa Vining as its first chief diversity officer.

 

Vining joins VaynerX from Omnicom’s Hearts & Science, where she was senior director, cross-cultural strategy and head of diversity, equity and inclusion. She has more than 25 years of experience in diversity investment and training in the advertising industry.

 

Vining will report directly to Vaynerchuk and work closely with VaynerX chief heart officer, Claude Silver, to develop a global DE&I framework and revamp hiring, retention and training programs with diversity in mind. She will focus on supplier diversity programs as well.

 

The appointment comes months after Vaynerchuk publicly promised to make three diverse hires to his executive team by June 1. Vining is the third hire after Maya Brewster-Dorian, chief production officer at VaynerX, and Eric Jacobs, chief innovation officer.

 

While Vaynerchuk was “a hair late” on his self-imposed deadline, “at the end of the day, you want to make the right choices,” he said, adding that there was a stop and start with another potential candidate.

 

VaynerX needs a dedicated executive focused on diversity to commit the “amount of energy, structure, strategy required to be great at DE&I internally” as well as to “create the trickle down effect in the way we think about our work,” Vaynerchuk said.

 

“It’s incredibly important to me that everyone in my organization feels as though they are being represented,” he added. “Equally important [are] strategies to acquire and recruit talent, create retention and career path growth.”

 

Vining will double down on VaynerX’s community resource groups while developing the “connective tissue” to string DE&I initiatives across the organization together globally.

 

“There's a lot of diversity, I can see it there already,” she said. “So [I’ll be] looking at, across the global organization, how we continue to foster belonging and inclusion while creating a destination where everyone wants to work.”

 

Retention will be a key focus for Vining, especially in the advertising industry, where agencies have focused diversity efforts at the junior hiring level.

 

“Diversity shouldn’t just sit at the junior associate level, and that's where the majority of talent in advertising has sat,” Vining said. “It’s difficult to see yourself on that career path when you don’t see people who look like you on the C-suite.”

 

Vaynerchuk added that Vining will have “plenty of budget” to tackle these initiatives because the company is privately held and has more flexibility for investment. “It’s an incredibly flat organization,” he said.

 

“Just because we don’t have open slots doesn’t mean we can’t hire,” he said. “That’s unheard of at holding companies.”

15507: Hungry And Homophobic? Grab A Snickers.

 

Advertising Age reported Snickers was forced to pull an advertisement—created by Contrapunto BBDO Madrid—after receiving accusations of homophobia. Somewhere, Bob Garfield is punching a hole in a wall.

 

Snickers Pulls Ad From Spain After Accusations Of Homophobia

 

The ad for Snickers Ice Cream draws rebuke from LGTBQ groups

 

By Sydney Gold

 

Snickers has pulled an ad for its ice cream bars in Spain after facing accusations of homophobia, a public misstep by the brand in its long-running “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign.

 

The online spot was removed amid backlash from consumers across Spain, The Guardian reported today. The spot features Spanish influencer Aless Gibaja ordering at a restaurant, wearing pink and behaving stereotypically feminine. The waiter looks back, puzzled, and hands Gibaja a Snickers Ice Cream bar. Suddenly, the influencer transforms into a bearded man, before the tagline appears: You’re not you when you’re hungry (No Eres Tu Cuando Tienes Hambre). The ad was produced by Contrapunto BBDO Madrid.

 

Snickers apologized in a statement: “We would like to wholeheartedly apologize for any harm caused by a recent advert for Snickers Ice Cream in Spain. We recognize that we got it wrong and have removed the online content immediately,” the brand announced.

 

Mike Wilke, founder of AdRespect.org, a website intended to provide guidance to corporations on LGBTQ stereotypes, homophobia and transphobia, criticized the ad. “The way I have assessed things through the years is to look at where is the humor? What are we supposed to be laughing at? And in this ad, we’re supposed to be laughing at how much of a sissy this guy is,” he says.

 

The ad also drew critical coverage on the website LGBTQnation.com, which cited criticism from the Spanish LGBTQ organization Federación Estatal LGTB, which called the ad “shameful and pitiful,” and tweeted: “If you need some training for your next try, we’re here,” according to the report.

 

Several of Snickers advertisements play with the theme of being out of place, as part of the brand’s successful “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign. Snickers, says Wilke, has been walking “a fine line” in several of its ads that deal with gender as a joke, including a 2018 ad featuring Elton John and a 2016 Super Bowl ad starring Willem DeFoe.

 

“In all of the cases, they’re sort of walking a fine line of, you know you know, the dude looks like a lady,” says Wilke.

 

Still, Wilke says, “I think those do better than this last one from Spain.”

 

It’s not the first time Snickers has been accused of homophobia. A 2008 ad played brazenly into gender stereotypes, as Mr. T shoots Snickers at a feminine speed walker in neon booty shorts. The celebrity shouts “Speed walking? I pity you, fool! You’re a disgrace to the man race!” before pelting him with candy bars from an armed pickup truck. In the end, the tagline flashes: “get some nuts.” And in 2007, Snickers faced backlash for a Super Bowl ad where two men are repulsed after kissing each other.

 

Despite these controversial advertisements, Snickers parent company Mars received the highest possible score on Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2021 corporate equality index, which specifically quantifies LGBTQ workplace equity. Another Mars brand, Skittles, has partnered with the organization GLAAD, which focuses on media portrayals and coverage of LGBTQ people.

15506: The Environmental Impact Of Branding.

 

Fundación Meri and Plastic Oceans in Chile teamed up to create this campaign that trashes popular American brands.

15505: Who’s Your Daddy, Er, Dady?

 

Just wanted to close out the week by considering how The Richards Group CEO Glenn Dady insists he’s very different than founder Stan Richards. Um, okay.

15504: The Richards Group Revs Up Its PR Machine.

 

Adweek published a report on the alleged evolution of The Richards Group, presenting patronizing PR that might be the White advertising agency’s most important campaign ever. Heat shields up! They named a White woman to CCO and a woman of color to pseudo CDO. Of course they did. CEO Glenn Dady doesn’t hesitate to throw Stan Richards under the bus, attempting to drive beyond the culture exposed by the founder’s cultural cluelessness. Why, there’s even talk of renaming the shop. The Little Richard Group…?

 

The Richards Group Emerges and Rebuilds After Last Year’s Scandal

 

Leaders discuss significant changes in internal culture since the agency’s founder fired himself

 

By Larissa Faw

 

The Richards Group is finally coming out of the shadows following scandal and turmoil caused by the founder Stan Richards. In October, news leaked that in an internal meeting for longtime client Motel 6, Richards, who at nearly 90 years old remained actively involved with the company, referred to a campaign idea for the client as being “too Black” and implied that some of Motel 6’s customers were white supremacists.

 

The hotel chain parted ways with the agency as did other high-profile clients such as Home Depot and H-E-B, collectively equaling 40% of its total revenue. Richards Group leaders admit that after the fallout, they were surviving day-to-day, frantically trying to keep the lights on while simultaneously overhauling its internal culture. Like many within the industry, the agency was forced reduce staff due to the Covid-19 pandemic, ultimately letting go 15% of its employees. An additional 15% exited during the controversy.

 

Now, CEO Glenn Dady, alongside a newly formed leadership team, is hard at work implementing change and making improvements as the agency—which Dady describes as uniquely independent, non-profit owned and people-run—transitions from damage control to lasting transformation. It’s even currently accepting applications for multiple positions.

 

“If you asked me a year-and-a-half ago what our success was and why we had it, I would have said it was about the work,” Dady told Adweek. “Today, I would say it’s about our people. If they are challenged, if they are happy, if they know where they are going, the great work naturally follows.”

 

The Richards Group is forthright about the unchecked bias at the top that was enabled by the founder’s leadership style. The new leadership is a better representation of the entire team.

 

“It is long overdue,” Dady said. He admits Richards traditionally surrounded himself with like-minded leaders: white, over 60, senior-level male creatives who frequently went on corporate retreats together to plan future strategies.

 

Under Dady’s purview, the company has started to diversify teams across the board starting with hiring Nikki Wilson as chief talent and culture officer and Sue Batterton as chief creative officer, with both serving on the leadership team.

 

“It is awesome to be part of a comeback story and to reshape the culture and help employees thrive and bring their authentic selves to work,” Batterton told Adweek, explaining why she returned to her old stomping grounds from agency BBDO Minneapolis.

 

Wilson, former human resources and labor relations director at General Motors, aims to integrate initiatives into the entire agency’s culture and operations, act as the agency’s champion for all employee resource groups and lead all human resources functions.

 

“As the agency continues to deliver great creative content, we also want to deliver a great employee experience,” Wilson said.

 

The company has just extended its partnership with Do What Matters, an outside organization that specializes in DEI and prioritizes inclusion-first management over more numerical diversification. The Richards Group has also introduced different councils of representation across all career levels, added an employment engagement survey and launched an anonymous reporting platform as part of an ongoing active listening exercise.

 

Damage control to transformation

 

Dady also emphasized his attempts to redirect the agency under his vision. The stories of Stan Richards occasionally falling asleep at client meetings are sadly accurate, he said. “What do you do when you have a founder running the company who is so smart even when he is nodding off during some meetings?” Dady quipped. “We do not have to worry about that anymore.”

 

Richards removed himself from the business following the scandal, though Dady has had some personal interactions with him over the past six months. “In his own way, he is proud of where we are going and what we are doing,” he said.

 

Looking forward, The Richards Group is still evolving into its new identity and vision which may even jettison its old moniker. An agency name change is “definitely still on the table,” Dady said. “There was a lot of pressure at the beginning because it was so emotional, but the pressure isn’t as much as from outsiders, but from internal stakeholder.”

 

In the meantime, the changes within the agency have helped it secure new clients as well as expand current accounts.

 

“Every client in America is multicultural and we are facing some new conversations, but we need to embrace inclusivity and promote more diverse perspectives and broaden the work to look for the human truth,” Batterton said. “The issues we face within our organizations are the same issues clients are currently experiencing. It is the time we did work that helped, not hurt.”

15503: Monumental Hooters.

 

Is this Germany’s idea of multicultural marketing…?

15502: TRG WTF ETC.

 

The Advertising Age report on the latest happenings at The Richards Group stated the White advertising agency lost 40% of its revenue—and up to 15% of its staff—as a direct result of Stan Richards’ ignorant comment. So now there’s a dollar figure for the cost of cultural cluelessness.

 

And, ironically, CEO Glenn Dady is charged with getting the firm back in the black.

15501: No Go, Fogo de Chão.

 

The creative team responsible for this Fogo de Chão campaign would be much better if fired. 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

By Brian Bonilla

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

15499: Cornell Diversity And Inclusion Certificate Certifiably Worthless.

 

If this Facebook ad was produced by a diverse creative team, it strongly counters the argument that diversity leads to better ideas.