15478: Pride Is The Same Old Story In The Philippines…?

 

This Retold With Pride campaign from the Philippines feels like a contrived concept that has been told a lot already.

 

15477: Extra Bold, Extra Bullshit…?

 

Sorry, but this book feels extra…opportunistic.

15476: Delegating Diversity, Appointing Social Responsibility.

 

Here comes Adland’s next heat shield executive: Chief Social Responsibility Officer.

15475: Touré On The Fourth Of July.

 

At theGrio, Touré sets off fireworks by declaring, “F**k the Fourth of July.”

15474: The Salvation Army Is Exclusive…?

 

This Salvation Army advertisement from Finland is odd with its ‘social exclusion’ message. After all, the kid of color in the group appears to be unhappy and excluded—more so than the kid allegedly experiencing social exclusion.

15473: Shiny Bubbles Don’t Make Me Happy Or Make Me Feel Fine…

 

This Dove campaign from Puerto Rico translates to “Pride in every wash.” Sorry, but the responsible creative team should not be proud of this shit…

 

15472: Calling Out The Culturally Clueless Crowd In Adland.

 

Adweek published a lengthy report on Three’s A Crowd—TAC—an advocacy group focused on reducing systemic racism and creating equity in Adland. TAC asks advertising agencies to pledge to taking an active and measurable role in fostering change. In the end, Three’s A Crowd has been about as successful as, well, Three’s A Crowd starring the late John Ritter. That is, after a single season, TAC saw 71 interested advertising agencies drop to 22—which is actually pretty good for an industry deliberately dealing in delegating diversity, discrimination and denial. The Adweek story also spotlighted the standard excuses offered by failing firms, as well as lessons learned by TAC representatives. The net comment: When it comes to the culturally clueless and consciously biased in Adland, there’s a crowd—and probably less than three legitimately enlightened White people.

 

Why Have 49 Agencies Dropped Their DEI Pledges?

 

Advocacy group Three’s A Crowd discusses challenges in fighting for racial equality

 

By Larissa Faw

 

Last June, members of the advocacy group Three’s a Crowd (TAC) sought to actionably reduce systemic racism and create equity in advertising with the “In for 13” initiative, a three-year promise to increase the percentage of Black leaders to 13%, representative of the U.S. population.

 

One year later the LA-based Black creative community is sharing its lessons and challenges in effecting change within Adland.

 

Spoiler alert: it didn’t go according to plan.

 

When TAC launched the pledge, 172 people from 71 different agencies signed up to create an environment where more Black and POC employees could be hired, promoted within and retained throughout the entire business.

 

As of Juneteenth 2021, 22 organizations (20 advertising agencies, 2 production houses) and 2 holding companies are currently committed to the pledge.

 

So, how did these numbers get from 71 agencies to less than half of that? And what’s keeping the agencies who are IN FOR 13, committed?

 

Commitment versus action

 

For one, change is really uncomfortable. And agencies are not ready for discomfort, Tahirah Edwards-Byfield, “In for 13” core member and creative director at 72andSunny told Adweek. “Promising to increase Black leadership by 2023 is one thing. Committing to doing it—and the structural changes it will take for many companies to do so effectively—is another thing entirely.”

 

TAC from the beginning made it clear that joining the pledge would include markers of accountability and transparency that the industry doesn’t usually demand. Most agencies who were initially interested in the pledge didn’t make it beyond the first ask to commit to being vulnerable.

 

“We wanted agencies to use the same thinking they’d use to solve a client’s problem,” Reonna Johnson, co-founder, TAC said. “Remember, clients come to agencies to fix problems, so we wanted to activate that same thinking for our internal challenges.”

 

Pledge takers also got swept up in the anti-racist sentiment of last summer, but tangible efforts fizzled quickly as the idea of being transparent, putting a real process in place and operationalizing the system set in, Johnson said. “Creating action around anti-racist practices felt like a lot of work that many agencies either weren’t equipped for or interested in.”

 

Excuses, excuses and more excuses

 

Johnson emphasized she was not interested in publicly shaming agencies that dropped out. There were many mid-level signees that were unable to get leadership to buy into the work, she said. She likened the drop-off to a romantic relationship in which a girl meets a guy, but gets scared away after the feelings get too intense too quickly. “It just got too real too quickly.” Other leaders felt they needed to focus on client retention, kept postponing updates to another month as well as disclosing how pandemic concerns readjusted their priorities.

 

Agencies also wanted a simple ready-made solution and pushed back when they were forced to do most of the work. “They were questioning [TAC’s] credentials in the DEI space, yet they still wanted details about how our initiative worked,” Johnson said.

 

She added “In for 13” is not actually a DEI initiative. “It is not designed to be a replacement for the work required systemically and culturally within for agencies to become truly anti-racist. The pledge is designed to be a marker of commitment to the work agencies, and our industry writ-large should be engaged in.”

 

While many pledge takers did ghost TAC, many drop-outs “borrowed” TAC’s framework to institute their own internal programs.

 

TAC’s six-phase multi-phase process was developed in consultation with DEI professionals, research specialists and race consultants, but is designed to serve as an addition to each agency overhauling their own internal cultures. “We are not doing the work for you. You need to overhaul your own internal culture.”

 

TAC also learned quickly that each phase was going to take a lot longer than anticipated. The group finished the first phase in October 2020 before moving the second step of research and development. This included publicly sharing diversity employee data on agency website, developing a public page that’s updated as the agency makes progress and completing a questionnaire by partner, the 4As, to receive a custom industry comparison report.

 

Bottlenecks and leadership hesitation

 

“This phase got extremely bottlenecked,” Johnson explained. “Not because the IN agencies weren’t trying, but because they were doing something new and it required internal buy-in from leadership.”

 

For some, there has been a bit of frustration with the pace of progress, she added. “In this industry, we’re used to moving at the speed of light to solve a brief. We want the business problem to be solved by a tidy project that we can summarize in a case study. That’s just not the reality of this work.”

 

Behind all the industry razzle-dazzle, advertising is built on a century-old inequitable system that requires reforming, similar to the challenges the U.S. is going through in that there is no quick path to reformation; reorienting companies to be equitable to the traditionally disadvantaged within agency walls can’t be done overnight.

 

Hiring Black talent

 

TAC has also lowered its expectations for its timeline based on three reasons, Johnson said. For one, career progression is “sorely lacking” as most agencies cannot find Black staff. “The only way to address the lack of talent at directors and above is to hire outside the advertising industry. Advertising executives (and agency clients) will have to evaluate whether they have the patience to invest in leaders who didn’t grow up in advertising.”

 

Leaders also need to address their challenges with talent retention. “There is heavy investment in college student hires but little to no investment in grooming managers and associate directors,” Johnson said. “Young Black talent can’t see themselves in leadership roles in advertising, so they leave. Or they don’t want to climb the ladder in which they’d like to assimilate into a culture that they don’t really identify with.”

 

In addition, Johnson believes the HR process needs to reevaluate its hiring timeframes. “Agencies promise clients they’ll have a person in a role in 90 days, which doesn’t give recruiters any time to practice their new thinking or implement programs,” she said. “They can’t find Black talent because they continue to go to their old Rolodex.”

 

The importance of diversity scorecards

 

TAC recommends alternative incentives beyond the obvious, like establishing Juneteenth as a holiday, to help end this systemic inequity beyond the industry’s walls. Helping with student loan debt or homeowner’s down payment as forms of signing bonuses or financial and family planning are some examples.

 

The entire industry must keep business-thinking at the forefront of these conversations, because if we don’t they become nice-to-have initiatives that aren’t taken seriously, Edwards-Byfield said. Clients can help push this consequence along by introducing diversity scorecards to hold agencies more accountable for creating more diverse work and hiring more diverse talent. “But it needs to be clearly stated in the scorecard, if any agency doesn’t adhere, they lose the project or the client, enforcing a direct consequence.”

 

Edwards-Byfield pointed out the most recent ANA diversity leadership breakdown reported Black senior leadership at brands was at 2%.

 

“Not only do they have to reach Black consumers and create more ads that speak to them, but brands need to hire and retain more senior Black talent as well.”

 

Focusing on those that are engaged and ready

 

Looking forward, TAC is not focused on getting more agencies to pledge, instead organizers are deepening the work with the 22 committed agencies. Each IN agency is starting to really look at its culture and how they can seriously retain talent, Johnson stated.

 

To foster communication between these agencies, TAC is currently building a digital community with best practices, tracking and monitoring as well as live events to push each other with the same goal.

 

“If last year taught the ad community anything, it’s that diversity, equity and inclusion had merely been on the periphery for the industry,” Johnson said. “Change seldom starts with a mass movement, but instead a few brave people who lead the charge.”

15471: The Face Of Facebook Is Still Exclusive.

 

Looks like Facebook is struggling to diversify its advertising too…

15470: Old Help Wanted At KFC.

 

McCann in Costa Rica uses Colonel Sanders to fight ageism. Maybe next he’ll hype Viagra with his girlfriend, Mrs. Butterworth…

 

15469: 4As President And CEO Marla Kaplowitz Has A Dream. Or Daydream.

 

Upon taking another look at the Digiday article on Chief Diversity Officers, the comments from 4As President and CEO Marla Kaplowitz warrant examination. Here are the excerpted quotes:

 

For Marla Kaplowitz, president and CEO of the 4A’s, the recent hirings point to agencies beginning to deliver on promises they made following last year’s protests.

 

“The real issue is race, ethnicity. This industry has not made progress and we have to be intentional,” Kaplowitz said. “These organizations have to signal change and they have to deliver action. That’s why you see the real shift in a good way in this past year.”

 

Agencies have taken big swings at diversifying talent, releasing annual workforce statistics and admitting where there’s work to be done. Each swing is vital and necessary to better reflect who this industry serves, said Kaplowitz.

 

“This country is composed of diverse people and backgrounds, and that’s what we should be embracing,” she said. “If you are in this business, you are meant to not only shape and influence culture, but to mirror it. And if you don’t actually have the people in your organization that can reflect society, then you’re not able to do that.”

 

In the future, Kaplowitz hopes the industry will move past the need for chief equity and diversity officers, and will instead have diversity and allyship embedded in company culture.

 

“It’s going to take a long time, but I don’t think anyone believed that a year ago we were going to have a quick fix in one year because this was a centuries long [problem] in terms of society,” she said. “But wouldn’t it be nice in 10 years if these roles just didn’t exist because we didn’t need to focus on it in the same way because we were all working in enlightened workplaces and communities?”

 

Perhaps Kaplowitz’s words were rearranged and presented out of context. Or maybe Kaplowitz is a culturally clueless cretin. Probably a combination of the two possibilities.

 

When Kaplowitz took her role in 2017, she gushed, “I think the 4As has done a tremendous job with diversity and I want to make sure that continues to grow…” Yet over four years later, she concedes, “This industry has not made progress [with racial and ethnic diversity] and we have to be intentional…” Gee, it could be argued that Kaplowitz is a patronizing politician—or an intentional liar. Probably both.

 

Most outrageous is Kaplowitz wondering, “But wouldn’t it be nice in 10 years if these [CDO] roles just didn’t exist because we didn’t need to focus on it in the same way because we were all working in enlightened workplaces and communities?” Gee, why not further the fantasy by suggesting the elimination of 4As heat shields like MAIP, Vanguard and Glass Ladder—as well as the termination of Simon Fenwick? Then take the ignorant notion to its logical extension by envisioning the end of multicultural marketing, Adland’s separate and unequal ghetto. Gee, perhaps Kaplowitz is a delusional dreamer—or just a fucking idiot. Probably both.

15468: Multicultural Marketing Mumbo Jumbo…

 

Oh boy—it’s not too late to experience Ad Age Next: Multicultural Marketing virtual event happening tomorrow. Hearing whatever the speakers have to say will be worth the price of admission. To be clear, it’s free. It’s a safe bet that attendees won’t miss anything interesting if opting to exit the Zoom extravaganza after Derek Walker speaks.

 

How Your Brand Needs To Rethink Multicultural Marketing

 

Last chance to RSVP for Ad Age Next: Multicultural Marketing event on June 29

 

In the past year, advertising and marketing professionals have re-evaluated their role in the perpetuating the inequities that persist in the U.S. More thought and more effort have been given to changing the diversity of leadership, staff and partners, the way business is conducted and how campaigns are crafted and released. But will the industry be able to sustain the momentum of this moment? And in a more fragmented consumer marketplace, is the so-called “general market” really relevant?

 

Don’t miss the Ad Age Next: Multicultural Marketing virtual event on June 29. Executives from Unilever, Black Enterprise, Mastercard and more will explore what multicultural marketing in a multicultural society looks like and how the industry can take its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives beyond HR.

 

Access to the livestream is only available for those who RSVP at AdAge.com/NextMulticultural.

 

Among the topics being discussed are:

 

• How to drive systemic change in the media ecosystem

 

• Why economic mobility for communities of color is key to changing the landscape

 

• How equity played a role in Chicago's vaccination marketing efforts

 

• If by undervaluing multicultural agencies the industry is undervaluing the audiences such specialist shops know how to reach

 

• What are the next steps for brands and how will progress be measured?

15467: Mosquito Coasting Creates Crap.

Why would anyone invite these clowns into their backyard? The responsible advertising agency should be swatted.

 

15466: Fanning Fires, Fueling Fears With Face Masks…?

 

Can’t help but wonder how former President Donald Trump and his fans might respond to this advertisement…