15148: Annie The Chicken Queen Has Flown The Coop.

The Popeyes YouTube channel tells the true story: Annie The Chicken Queen is gone. And she didn’t even get a send-off like the Honey Bunches of Oats Lady. Damn.

 

15147: Love That Enhanced Chicken From Popeyes.

Check out the disclaimer in the footer of the Popeyes website: All pictures are shown for illustrative purposes only. Actual product may vary due to product enhancement.

 

Um, yeah.

 

 

 

15146: If You Don’t Save For Retirement, You’re An Ass(et).

Ok, who’s the smart ass who sold SmartAsset as this financial company’s name?

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

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

15144: D&AD&Divertsity.

White woman presents Black Pencils. Perfect.

15143: GS&P&Equity&Diversity&Inclusion&Bullshit.

 

Adweek reported White advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners named Jennifer Gomes as Head of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Of course they did.

15142: Saatchi & Saatchi Promotes White Supremacy, Er, White Power.

Saatchi & Saatchi in Thailand created an Oral-B campaign featuring the tagline, “White is Great.” Brilliant. Oh, and the concept presents light-skinned casting too.

 

 

 

15141: Racist Myths In Sport Versus Racist Realities In Adland.

Campaign published a perspective from Dark Horses Head of Strategy Mark Readman, who opined that advertising perpetuates racist stereotypes related to sports—and it’s a problem that must be addressed. Seems like a stretch of sorts, until realizing that Dark Horses specializes in sports advertising. Of course, it appears there are few dark horses in the Dark Horses stable. All of which makes Readman’s navel-gazing, well, horseshit.

  

How advertising fuels racist myths in sport

 

The best and worst of how we deal with race as a society is exaggerated in sport, so the myths surrounding it must be re-examined.

 

By Matt Readman

 

If the Black Lives Matter movement has taught us anything this year, it is that to make meaningful change it is no longer good enough to be “not racist”. We need to be “anti-racist”, actively combating racism all of the time.

 

To do this, we not only need to question our own biases, but also the historical narratives that we have been told. One area of culture where this is particularly important is in sport, which has a long-standing and complicated relationship with race.

 

Sadly, live sport remains one of the last harbourers of public and overt racial abuse. While progress is being made, it is not being made fast enough.

 

However, on the other side of the coin is sport’s role as a platform for social justice and empowerment. Whether it’s Jesse Owens, Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos in 1968 (pictured, top) or Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James today, sport has always provided a global stage to combat racial injustice.

 

Thus, sport and race have ever been intertwined. The best and worst of how we deal with race as a society is exaggerated in sport and this is why it is worthy of examination.

 

There is another side of race and sport that lies deeper beneath the surface, but is possibly the most damaging of all: sport’s role in forming stereotypes and fuelling myths. The consequences stretch well beyond the pitch, helping to cement and reinforce many of the broader social injustices we face today.

 

Sport, like so many other constructs in our society, was built on what sociologist Joe Begin calls the “white social frame”. Modern sport as we know it was created at the peak of colonialism. It was in this furnace of injustice that the myth of “the black athlete” was forged.

 

The idea that black people are naturally more athletic than white may not shock you. In fact, you may have presumed that this was widely accepted as true — such is the power of this narrative that most people at some level do believe in it. But aside from a few hyperlocalised exceptions, no study has ever found any serious evidence to suggest significant athletic differences between races.

 

How, then, did this myth become so widely accepted? In his book Race, Sport and Politics, Ben Carrington claims that the “black athlete” was not only a conscious “invention” but also a “political entity and [...] an attempt to reduce blackness itself”.

 

Whether you agree that it was deliberately constructed or not, there is little doubt that the idea that black athletes were physically superior to white emerged in the early 1900s and has been easy to trace throughout the 20th century. Owens’ coach in 1936 claimed: “The n**** excels as it was not long ago that his ability to sprint and jump was a matter of life and death.”

 

In 1968, commentator Jimmy Snyder got fired for saying live on air: “The black athlete is better to begin with because he has been bred that way.” Even legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus once dismissed the absence of black golfers (pre-Tiger Woods) by saying black athletes “have different muscles that react in different ways”.

 

If you think this myth has been banished alongside other parts of our unsavoury history, think again. Recent artificial-intelligence analysis has shown that the way modern commentators talk about white and non-white athletes is markedly different, with comments about athletic ability being more greatly attributed to the latter and intelligence or character to the former.

 

Similarly, a study by the University of Colorado examining the racial stereotypes of NFL quarterbacks found “that the terms physical strength and natural ability were more associated with black quarterbacks, while leadership and intelligence was more associated with white quarterbacks”.

 

Like so many other dangerous stereotypes, this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Young black athletes at the earliest level in all team sports are still picked by coaches to play in certain positions to take advantage of their athleticism. Over time, a pattern emerges where black athletes will massively over-index in certain sports or positions, fuelling the stereotype further.

 

The risk is that, despite all the current goodwill to change, this stereotype stays largely hidden. Former rugby league winger Martin Offiah recently found himself at the centre of a debate on whether the singing of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot should be permitted at Twickenham. This is the type of debate that grabs headlines but doesn’t help solve the bigger issue. The part of Offiah’s story we should be focusing on is the role of this myth on his career. When we spoke to him, this is what he had to say:

 

“I myself suffered from this very same stereotype. As a promising schoolboy centre, I was ushered to the wing in the pro ranks and my 501 career tries are often attributed to my speed rather than my intellect and problem-solving brain […] Fear and change is tough to swallow, especially after a lie was told and believed.”

 

You may of course argue that this is a relatively harmless stereotype. This is just “sport”, after all. The reality, however, is that it has deep and highly destructive consequences beyond sport.

 

Perceptions of athletic ability and intelligence are inversely correlated. This is the true destructive force of the myth of the black athlete. Sociologist Harry Edwards, the man who engineered the Black Power protest at the 1968 Olympics, explains: “By asserting that blacks are physically superior… [it creates] an informal acceptance that whites are intellectually superior.” One seemingly positive stereotype leads to another devastating one.

 

The biases left by this myth run deep. Not just in the fact that coaching and management positions in sport are still vastly controlled by white figures — even in sports that are dominated by black athletes — but more harmfully in the aspirations of young black people who see athleticism as their main route to success.

 

Advertisers are far from innocent in the creation of this myth. Carrington calls it out specifically, saying the stereotype is “defined by common folklore, sports discourse — most powerfully within the sports media — and by the advertising industries”.

 

If we are going to help reverse its potency, we need to respond on two levels. On a personal level as fans and spectators, we have to challenge our own biases. We have to question the narratives we’ve been told. We need to look at eight black athletes competing in the 100m final and not explain it as genetic difference, but instead understand the self-fulfilling power of this myth. I can admit from personal experience that, despite being passionate about this cause and open-eyed to the dangers, I still find myself having to regularly battle these biases.

 

As an industry, we need to do more to avoid any stereotyping of black athletes. We need to resist calling out their “natural” talent. We need to champion their broader achievements and qualities. We need to create campaigns that actively attack this myth and open our eyes to the biases around us. We need to help tell an alternative narrative and help a future generation understand the only differences between us on the pitch and in life are the ones we ourselves have created.

 

Matt Readman is head of strategy at Dark Horses

15140: Rating Rapists…?

 

This digital campaign from Nigeria encourages potential rapists to take an online quiz to determine if they are indeed sex offenders. There’s a Gustavo Martinez joke here somewhere…

15139: Knight’s Out—Ford’s Visual Metaphor Misses The Mark.

 

This Ecuadorian advertisement for Ford Armored displays flimsy thinking—after all, why depict a figure who would be most comfortable riding a horse?

15138: Redefining Diversity, Reaffirming Exclusivity.

 

Just wanted to comment on Advertising Age reporting Dentsu Aegis Network—new home of the restlessly ambitious Wendy Clark—tapped Christena Pyle to become its first Chief Equity Officer. Chief Integration Officer. Director of Empathy. Chief Equity Officer. When did diversity become a dirty word? The only real diversity in adland involves the variety of dodgy synonyms for diversity.

 

Christena Pyle Leaves Time’s Up For Dentsu Aegis Network

 

By Lindsay Rittenhouse

 

Dentsu Aegis Network has tapped Christena Pyle as its first chief equity officer, Americas. Pyle, executive director of the Time’s Up Foundation, the organization created in the wake of the #MeToo movement, is set to join Dentsu Aegis Network’s executive leadership team on Aug. 31, reporting to Americas CEO Jacki Kelley.

 

Pyle declined an interview but said in a statement that she is “a true believer in the power of” diversity, equity and inclusion.

 

“Having a diverse mix of talent who can take on the challenges and opportunities a business faces, now and in the future, is a critical factor in any company’s success and resilience,” Pyle said. “In spending time with the Dentsu team, it’s clear that this is a group of people who place the value of caring—for their people, their communities, their customers and each other—at the forefront of the decisions they make.”

 

Pyle took over as Time’s Up’s first executive director of advertising in June 2019 with the mandate “to create safe, equitable and harassment-free workplaces for all” across the ad industry. Dentsu Aegis Network says her impact went beyond advertising and marketing, citing the guidelines Pyle created in May for all businesses to follow to protect the diversity of their workforces as they downsize during the pandemic.

 

No successor has been named at this point.

 

“We’re thrilled Christena will continue her commitment to transform the advertising industry from within in this new role and look forward to working alongside her for many years to come,” said Tina Tchen, president and CEO of Time’s Up Foundation in a statement.

 

“Christena will help us create an inclusive, nurturing place for diversity to thrive, as we shape and lead transformational DE&I efforts and align them to our strategy,” said Kelley.

 

Before Time’s Up, Pyle served as Omnicom Group’s director of diversity and inclusion for five years. While there, she was responsible for accelerating DE&I outcomes across the holding company. She also worked as a director of Adcolor while at Omnicom. Before that, she held stints at agencies including Wieden + Kennedy, Ogilvy and Arnold Worldwide.

 

Her appointment follows the appointment of Wendy Clark as global CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network. Clark is the former CEO of Omnicom Group’s DDB Worldwide and also has a history with Time’s Up. In October 2018, Clark stepped down from the leadership committee for Time’s Up Advertising after reportedly hiring creative Ted Royer as a freelancer. Royer had previously left his post as Droga5’s chief creative officer amid an internal investigation, whose details have yet to be made public.

15137: Directing Empathy Is A Full-Time Job.

 

White advertising agency David&Goliath appointed a Director of Empathy. Of course they did.

15136: The True Reason Why Ad Industry Activism Isn’t Working…

 

Advertising Age published a long and laborious report titled, “Why Ad Industry Activism Isn’t Working.” The piece opined that diversity initiatives have been ineffective because minorities are not unified in their efforts—with Nathan Young and Tiffany R. Warren presented as symbolizing the alleged contrasting and conflicting positions. This is a stereotypical perspective rooted in ignorance and bullshit. After all, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X had differing styles, yet each managed to ignite progress. No, the dearth of diversity in Adland is not the result of opposing Black viewpoints—rather, it comes from the successful unity of White men and White women perpetuating exclusivity and fostering systemic racism. Give credit where credit is due.

 

Why Ad Industry Activism Isn’t Working

 

Well-meaning attempts by TimesUp Advertising and 600 & Rising were hampered by competing interests, infighting and resistance to change

 

By Lindsay Rittenhouse

 

“There’s a lot of urgency in this moment,” said Nathan Young in announcing the formation of 600 & Rising, the nonprofit dedicated to dismantling systemic racism in the industry. “This is something we’ve observed in past situations, where a group has raised an issue about inequality in the ad industry, there’s a brief news cycle, agencies weather through the storm and it ends up being swept up under the rug. We’re forming to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

 

In the three months since, Young has stepped down as president and the group said it was dissolving its structure and will rebuild after a 30-day assessment period that ends September 7. People close to the matter point to missteps along the way, such as Young breaking ranks with existing diversity initiatives by tweeting a criticism of Adcolor, sparking backlash. They also say that the movement’s leaders, Young and co-founder Bennett D. Bennett became figureheads, which they argue the industry does not need anymore.

 

In a recent interview with Ad Age, Young says he also stepped down from his role as group strategy director of Minneapolis agency Periscope out of concern for his and his family’s welfare. “I had to step down from everything and I’m honestly not sure I’m going to come back to advertising,” he says.

 

But Young was certainly right about one thing: this is an all-too familiar story. The current situation surrounding 600 & Rising brings to mind another industry initiative, Times Up Advertising, which was founded to fight sexual harassment and discrimination in the industry. Like 600 & Rising’s rapid rise amid the racial injustice movement fueled by Black Lives Matter, Times Up Advertising was also formed in a reckoning period, the MeToo movement, with a few select members leading the charge. Like 600 & Rising, Time’s Up Advertising’s original leaders were thrust quickly into the spotlight, experienced a public stumble, and then stepped back.

 

Times Up, of course, is still operating, and the hope is that 600 & Rising will recover. But their mutual experience indicates there is a larger, industry-wide issue at work. Consider the commonalities: People interviewed for this story said that both groups’ original founders underestimated the complicated process for building these types of organizations. They say groups like these are rarely equipped to tackle the systemic issues they set out to fight, because they structure themselves in the same red-tape heavy model that perpetuated the system, dependent on layers of consensus and approval. And some say both causes got caught in a tug-of-war between the industry’s old and new guard, stymying progress.

 

In short, the ad industry can’t seem to get out of its own way.

 

The irony, says one diversity and inclusion chief within a holding company agency, is that the goal of both organizations was to make the ad industry a more inclusive place, but they were actually not inclusive of all points of view.

 

“This is where I believe both of these initiatives went sideways: An emotional group of people, and emotional for all the right reasons, thought they could build a better mousetrap,” says a D&I exec, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Well-meaning people were looking at their set of experiences and they were making judgment calls about what it would take to prevent X and Y from happening and what it would take to change a situation.” The problem, the executive says: “These leaders were limited to their set of experiences.”

 

Powerful white women

 

Time’s Up Advertising found itself in hot water not long after its March 2018 founding. When the organization held its first open community meetings across 14 cities, many advertising professionals who were not current agency employees were turned away, such as freelancers. Some of the excluded women were those forced from the industry due to the pervasive sexual harassment that the organization was founded to fight. There were also criticisms lodged against the organization for not being inclusive enough of women of color. Omnicom Director of Diversity Christena Pyle later assumed the helm of Time’s Up Advertising but stepped down last week to become chief equity officer of the Americas at Dentsu Aegis Network. Her successor has not yet been named. She declined to be interviewed for this story.

 

But, in its early days, Time’s Up Advertising’s most public-facing executives were white women, including Wieden + Kennedy Global Chief Creative Officer Colleen DeCourcy and former DDB Worldwide CEO Wendy Clark, who was recently named global CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network.

 

The most damaging blow to Time’s Up Advertising came when Clark, while leading DDB, hired former Droga5 Chief Creative Officer Ted Royer to assist on a creative pitch for Volkswagen. Royer, one of several men accused of misconduct by the anonymous Diet Madison Avenue Instagram account, left Droga5 under an internal investigation, but the nature of the probe was never disclosed.

 

After hiring Royer, Clark was forced to step down from Time’s Up Advertising, saying, “Regrettably, I fell into a traditional paradigm of business first and given the choice again I would do things differently. That was a mistake. The reckoning for past behavior is not just for survivors of sexual harassment, but for the whole industry, which needs systemic change.”

 

DeCourcy, who declined comment for this story, has also since stepped back from the spotlight.

 

The D&I executive says Time’s Up Advertising in its original form was led by “powerful white women” who decided “how we’re going” to fight sexual harassment and discrimination in the industry. And just as the Suffrage Movement of the 19th and 20th centuries left out Black women, the exec says many women of color who felt slighted by the Time’s Up Advertising movement were left asking: “What about us?”

 

She also criticized the “action plan” Time’s Up Advertising put forth in its early days, which asked women in senior leadership positions to pledge to “foster a workplace where people are challenged but still respected”; uphold that sexual harassment is “never” OK; and to challenge “old power dynamics.”

 

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, we got the most powerful women in the industry and that’s what they came up with? An HR program?’” says the D&I exec.

 

Another holding company-owned agency executive who requested anonymity notes that in moments of public reckoning, agencies and clients are desperate “to want to act fast to make up for the lack of time” but they “haven’t done the basics, the culture isn’t in place and you want your intention, in some cases so obviously [influenced] by HR and PR, to get you credit that you haven’t earned from an audience who does not know or trust you.”

 

Too many voices?

 

With 180 initial signatories, Times Up Advertising had many voices and many agendas to be heard. 600 & Rising, so named after its signatories, had more than triple that number at its original founding. Add to this the fact that most agencies already have established internal programs in place to address discrimination against people of color with well-paid D&I chief roles, longstanding industry-wide initiatives like Adcolor, and the 40-year-old 4A’s Multicultural Advertising Internship Program.

 

Bennett and Young seem to have inadvertently stepped on some well-shod toes when they penned their open letter to U.S. agencies outlining 12 actions necessary to achieve equity for people of color. The original letter quickly ballooned to 1,100 signatories as U.S. agencies and holding companies committed to the 12 actions, the first of which entailed releasing their staff diversity data.

 

The rapid positive response—as well as the significant amount of ink industry trade publications including Ad Age gave to the nonprofit and founders—gave the organization considerable clout. As the group’s notoriety grew, so did pressure to join. That didn’t sit well with some executives, part of an older guard who had dedicated their entire careers to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the industry, who felt the 600 & Rising’s solutions were simplistic and bordering on insulting.

 

“Releasing numbers doesn’t change anything,” says another D&I executive, whose agency nonetheless signed on to 600 & Rising. “It just makes a problem more well-known.” He cites its No. 4 call to action, asking shops to pledge to bias training for HR employees and management, as an example. “Pledge training? We’ve had training for decades,” the exec scoffs.

 

Despite their reservations, these D&I execs say they were ordered to sign on by agency leaders in a show of good faith.

 

Bennett declines comment for this story, citing the reassessment period the group is now undergoing. “We only existed as an organization for a little more than 60 days,” Young says. “Our first 60 days were about representing the people. Not the elites or the old guard, per se.”

 

He says 600 & Rising “had every intention” of working with the more established DE&I executives as the organization progressed, and notes that some of them were appointed to the advisory council and board.

 

Breaking ranks

 

On July 29, Young tweeted: “@ADCOLOR is an awards ceremony completely divorced from reality that sells the story that progress is being made on diversity in advertising and buys cover for holding companies.”

 

To some, Young’s tweet felt like a slap. “Why should the people in power, who are white people, care about us if we use our power and stage to tear each other down?” the first D&I exec says. “Especially if there is a person of color in a position of power, the job should be to support that person, not use a public platform to disparage who that person is.”

 

The reference was to Adcolor founder and president Tiffany Warren, who also serves as senior VP and chief diversity officer of Omnicom Group. Warren declines to discuss with Ad Age the situation with 600 & Rising, but stresses that Adcolor was not specifically designed as a group to promote diversity in the industry. Instead its purpose is to bring visibility to marginalized creatives who were not getting the recognition they deserved from industry awards like The Clios and Cannes Lions.

 

“We didn’t set out to say ‘I’m going to fix the diversity, equity and inclusion problem in the industry,’” Warren says. “We say very clearly that we honor people in their achievements to create a blueprint for others to follow. ... People have to recognize that there are different forms to get to the racial equity finish line. There is no one way.”

 

She adds, “It’s not conducive to not be collaborative on that front.”

 

Some believe that it wasn’t so much Young’s comment, but the way it was made that was to blame. “Why do we do this to ourselves? It’s so messy. While I do agree organizations like Adcolor could be better for a number of reasons, for example cliqueyness [sic], overall they’re working for change,” one senior VP wrote on the anonymous industry app Fishbowl. “I feel like that’s an opinion that should’ve been voiced in the community/amongst friends. We need to be a united front if we want change.”

 

Young acknowledges this criticism and, in hindsight, agrees. He says he “regrets” the public comments he made about Adcolor. “Systemic racism is an enormous problem,” he says. “It does really require us all to work together. Organizations can disagree on tactics, but we shouldn’t resort to public criticisms. There needs to be more collaboration and less competition.”

 

Getting its sea legs

 

Kai D. Wright—founder and curator of blacklist100, global consulting partner for Ogilvy and Columbia University lecturer—believes 600 & Rising’s biggest problem is that it was too tied to its leaders. He says “there are many successful models for change that are not the traditional hierarchy of top-down with one leader, which helps prevent any single leader's missteps from distracting from the mission, message and movement of the broader community of supporters.”

 

Wright points to Black Lives Matter as one such grassroots initiative. “The more voices and the bigger the coalition, the better,” he says, noting that he hopes to see that from 600 & Rising when it reemerges. “It’s incredibly important to give [600 & Rising] time to get their sea legs,” he says.

 

“You can’t fight against traditional structures by setting up the same structures,” mired in legal and administrative “bullshit.”

 

Kai Deveraux Lawson, global director of community engagement and global culture at WPP

 

Young notes that he was unintentionally thrust into the spotlight to be the voice for “thousands” of Black industry professionals and that this was not something he “was prepared to do.” He says it was never his or Bennett’s intention to become so prominent in the organization. “That was an unintended consequence,” he says, of having tough conversations “in the open and not behind closed doors.”

 

Fighting ‘traditional structures’

 

There’s also a theory that both Time’s Up Advertising and 600 & Rising became too, well, organized.

 

Kai Deveraux Lawson, global director of community engagement and global culture at WPP, declines to comment specifically on either group, but says, generally, that the challenge with marketing and advertising executives starting community initiatives is that they try to build it in the way they know how: like a company. “You can’t fight against traditional structures by setting up the same structures,” which she says get mired in legal and administrative “bullshit.”

 

“When you get into larger organizations, you have stakeholders, shareholders, members,” Deveraux Lawson says. “Now you have 1,000 people you have to legally listen to. If your activism is in the name of gender advocacy, have you spoken to all the women? Or were you busy formulating contracts? If it’s racial injustice, have you spoken to all the people who experienced racism or were you busy filing documentation so you’re fine for the next tax season?”

 

One D&I exec who signed the 600 & Rising’s “Call to Action” letter argues that there’s been too much pressure on industry organizations to effect the change, when instead the onus should be on the executives within the companies that continue to uphold discriminatory structures.

 

“We have been demanding change for decades, internally and externally,” the exec says. “Adcolor cannot change an industry, neither can 600 & Rising, nor can Time’s Up. They can shed light on [issues], but the change has to start with the people who run these companies.”

 

So why hasn’t it happened? Says this exec: “They don’t truly want change.”