17021: New Acronyms, Old Acrimony.

 

More About Advertising reported on how “plenty of employers are quietly finding clever ways to circumvent [President Donald J.] Trump’s executive orders” to nix DEIBA+ initiatives.

 

The cleverness includes introducing new acronyms and utilizing whitewashed descriptors for heat shields.

 

One DEIBA+ advocate opined, “The reason most people voted for the current administration had nothing to do with rejecting inclusion and more to do with the economy and a sense of security around immigration and borders.”

 

Okay, except Ibram X. Kendi declared racism is rooted in “powerful economic, political, and cultural self-interest.” Plus, “a sense of security around immigration and borders” is arguably about denying non-Whites access to the places and privileges exclusive to the ruling majority.

 

In short, the responsive and revisionist verbiage dodges a simple truth: anti-DEIBA+ is pro-racism.

 

When everyone’s ditching DEI, what happens next?

 

By Emma Hall

 

What do you do when Donald Trump has you in his sights? It’s a problem that US diversity, equity and inclusion specialists are wrestling with now that even straightforward words like “female,” “women,” “historically” and “victims” are officially considered problematic.

 

The answer for some businesses, like Google, Amazon, Meta, Paramount, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola, has been to roll back DEI policies. But while their dramatic u-turns have attracted all the publicity, plenty of employers are quietly finding clever ways to circumvent Trump’s executive orders.

 

In the process, a new vocabulary and a new acronym – FAIR (fairness, access, inclusion and representation) – are injecting fresh energy into former DEI initiatives which, let’s face it, were in need of a reset. DEI had become less about creating change and more about ticking boxes: one-off workshops, a performative approach and an over-reliance on burnt out volunteers had already created a backlash against it.

 

FAIR is outlined by Lily Zheng in the Harvard Business Review. She gives the example of an introverted person who is often spoken over in meetings. A 50-minute lunch event on “the power of introverts” attended by a handful of people is not going to help. Introverts are better supported by receiving meeting agendas ahead of time, and by managers with good meeting facilitation skills.

 

The goals are the same but the emphasis is on outcomes rather than intentions; debiasing systems rather than “fixing” individuals, and communicating the win-win value of this work rather than giving in to zero-sum narratives.

 

Valeria Piaggio, global head of inclusive growth at Kantar’s Sustainable Transformation Practice, says: “I think most companies are changing their vocabulary without making a big announcement. It’s important to note that the political climate does not reflect the average consumer. Based on our studies, people want inclusion in their lives and they want it from brands as well. It’s even more important in the many places where people experience discrimination while they are out shopping.”

 

Piaggio adds: “The reason most people voted for the current administration had nothing to do with rejecting inclusion and more to do with the economy and a sense of security around immigration and borders. The fact that some other issues are now at the top of the agenda is puzzling to them. And the prices are not going down.”

 

A backlash against companies that roll back DEI is already having an impact. Target, which made a rather abrupt volte face on 24^th January, has seen a traffic slump ever since. For the week beginning March 10^th, foot traffic fell 7.1% year on year.

 

In the end, it’s about better business sense. Piaggio says: “Most companies understand that they need diversity and an inclusive culture in order to be more competitive. You need employees who understand different cultural influences and segments, and you need to be able to communicate in a way that aligns with the values and beliefs of different audiences and generations.”

 

Piaggio points to the Hispanic market, which is growing disproportionately compared to other groups in the US – not just in terms of buying power but also in terms of shaping the culture. If you don’t have connections to that community, you aren’t going to be able to respond to this kind of cultural shift.

 

FAIR is not all cloak-and-dagger DEI: some companies, including Costco, Chase and Nasdaq, are brave enough to restate their commitment to the cause.

 

Piaggio concludes: “[The BLM movement in] 2020 was a loud awakening for the need to embrace diversity and change, but maybe we didn’t think enough about how that makes others feel. Inclusion is a delicate balancing act. Equity was one of the words that went first because it creates most friction: when you reach out to empower groups that are under-represented, those who are part of the status quo or think they are entitled to those positions feel threatened. You need to make sure everyone understands why we need that diversity, and that one person’s opportunity doesn’t have to hurt someone else. Merit is still the driving force.”

17020: Omnicom Group Expands Acquisition Plan.

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

April 1, 2025

 

Omnicom to acquire IPG, WPP, Publicis Groupe, Dentsu, Havas, and Stagwell

 

280 Park Avenue, New York, NY -- Omnicom Group Chairman-CEO-Pioneer of Diversity John Wren announced the White holding company plans to supplement its pending acquisition of IPG, adding WPP, Publicis Groupe, Dentsu, Havas, and Stagwell to the global empire.

 

The groundbreaking enterprise will be called Omnicombo. Or Omnicommode. Or Omnicolonizer.

 

The move is estimated to save gazillions, although analysts predict identifying redundancies, addressing client conflicts, and rejiggering hierarchies could take decades.

 

The proposed scheme sets a world record for C-suite executives’ golden parachutes—and all other staffers’ golden showers.

 

Under the new regime, Chief Diversity Officers, ERGs, performative PR, and heat shields will be replaced and/or executed by AI technology, pending the development of unbiased algorithms. In the interim, expect such responsibilities and duties to be delegated to BIPOC receptionists, mailroom attendants, janitorial crews, and security personnel.

17019: Adding SWANA Chorus To DEIBA+ Swan Song In Adland.

Advertising Age published a perspective advocating for DEIBA+ that ultimately dilutes the global discussion by introducing yet another underrepresented group—SWANA (people of Southwest Asian and North African descent).

 

Increasing the number of marginalized segments in Adland, however, does not lead to an increase in crumbs. Rather, it probably increases indifference and disinterest from the ruling majority.

 

BTW, April is SWANA Heritage Month. Don’t expect major brands to present performative promotions recognizing the event.

 

DEI Retreat Empowers Brands To Create Work Driven By Conviction, Not Policy

 

Standing outside DEI’s frame gave Southwest Asian and North African creators a clear view of how to create true change

 

By Mohammad Gorjestani

 

As DEI evaporates across culture and industry, a critical question remains: Whose vision of diversity was being implemented in the first place? For the advertising and creative industries, DEI’s retreat represents a significant loss and a seismic shift in what gets produced, whose voices are amplified and whose careers advance.

 

For Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) creatives, however, it’s business as usual—we’ve been operating and hustling outside these structures all along.

 

I was born in Iran to artist parents and grew up in Section 8 housing in the San Francisco Bay area. My studio, Even/Odd, was founded out of necessity. Coming from a low-income background with no higher education, the unconventional stories I wanted to tell from the margins—and the way I wanted to tell them—lacked mainstream appeal.

 

I’ve been primed throughout my life to develop an attuned instinct that, among many things, has helped me see through the theater of concepts reminiscent of “DEI” long before they morphed into industry buzzwords.

 

These frameworks have always been cropped, flattening the “different” into digestible categories that conveniently excluded communities such as mine. SWANA identities aren’t just overlooked; our exclusion reveals DEI’s fundamental design flaws. What’s happening now isn’t a retreat. It’s power shedding a temporary disguise, returning to form after a brief, unconvincing performance.

 

The calculated blind spots in DEI’s vision

 

SWANA is not even considered an official minority group. Census designations label us “white,” erasing our lived experience. This bureaucratic fiction is absurd given decades of post-9/11-ism, travel bans and interventions in the Middle East.

 

When agencies establish quotas for diverse suppliers, we do not “count.” The National Minority Supplier Development Council doesn't recognize SWANA-owned businesses. The result? Systematic exclusion from economic opportunities that are supposedly designed to uplift marginalized communities. 

 

While the industry congratulated itself for progress, our exclusion from minority recognition revealed DEI's fundamental contradiction: a framework supposedly built for inclusion that selectively determined which communities deserved recognition. The system welcomed dissent, but only to a point. The glaring omission of SWANA reveals just how unserious and haphazard DEI education has been.

 

For example, the same industry that spent a year championing Black Lives Matter was, like the rest of culture-at-large, absent in 2023—the deadliest year of police killings on record in the United States. This erasure exposes the nature of corporate DEI efforts: diversity was always more about fashion than reform.

 

The advertising and creative industry's approach to diversity also created a monolithic ecosystem where talent was compartmentalized by identity. Black creators were given agency to create work about Black culture and Asian creators for AAPI month, while white creatives maintained the freedom to explore any subject at any moment. This pigeonholing isn’t just limiting—it can be a career dead-end, leaving creators with nothing once identity opportunities dry out.

 

Let’s get past the ‘Struggle Olympics’

 

DEI also inadvertently turned diversity into the “Struggle Olympics”—creators competing for limited resources by chasing the latest DEI trend. This dynamic pushed many toward reactive work, where cosplaying activism became a necessary tool to gain visibility. Many were reduced to reactive commentators rather than multidimensional visionaries. And the worst part is that people began to play into this and abandon that inner artist.

 

SWANA’s exclusion in DEI frameworks made me refuse to engage in projects that felt sentimental rather than singular or substantive. Too often, DEI initiatives encouraged work that allowed dominant audiences to feel momentarily moved without having to confront structural realities. That kind of performative engagement was the canary in the coal mine.

 

Terms such as BIPOC are also an issue, flattening distinct cultural experiences and erasing the specificity that gives stories their power. Iran, a multiethnic country distinct from the Arab world, is frequently lumped into vague “Middle Eastern” representation. Within agencies, SWANA creatives rarely received even the limited recognition given to other marginalized groups. When visibility came, it was often reduced to creating “Middle Eastern” campaigns or Muslim-focused content, disregarding the region’s and diaspora’s rich diversity of faiths, cultures and perspectives.

 

True diversity means freedom to create beyond prescribed boundaries. Creative autonomy should be a universal right. Excellence is multiplied by authenticity, but when agencies reduce diverse creators to cultural representatives rather than full-fledged artists with unlimited potential, they practice sophisticated tokenism, not inclusion.

 

The future of DEI—or whatever it might be called next—requires the advertising and creative industry to fundamentally rethink its approach. If its blind spots regarding SWANA communities can be addressed, it might offer a blueprint for a more substantive framework—one that creates genuine opportunities for paradigm-shifting work rather than reactive, identity-based slots.

 

Agencies, brands, and studios should examine their talent pipeline, asking not just “Do we have diverse creators?” but “Are we allowing all creators the same self-determination?”

 

We also need to separate cultural equity from economic equity. There’s a difference between an industry promoting diversity on its website and an industry ensuring diverse founders have access to real capital and opportunities. If DEI 1.0 served only to help existing institutions navigate this moment unscathed, then we must be vigilant about what comes next. The goal should not be to help these structures shape-shift into the next trend but to demand new pathways that challenge their dominance altogether.

 

The silver lining of this moment is that it offers a lot of clarity—revealing who remains committed to genuine inclusion and who has retreated to the next industry trend. As the corporate spotlights dim, we can now distinguish between fickle allies and those in for the long haul. This is an opportunity for agencies to reexamine their principles and create work driven by conviction, not manufactured policy.

 

Ultimately, we must move beyond DEI as a label and toward what it should have always represented: the critical understanding that the most vital creative breakthroughs emerge from the periphery. And investing in the infrastructure to support that is necessary—not just for the SWANA community, but for everyone who has been excluded from the industry’s prescribed narratives. When we can create from outside the center, we create new reference points that shift the status quo.

17018: Performative Promotion For Patronizing Prizes.

 

This promotion for Campaign’s Inspiring Women Awards is uninspiring and unworthy of awards. It appears to be stereotypical stock imagery too.

 

Despite that, the event will probably draw plenty of entrants seeking performative prizes, as well as generate profit for the publication.

17017: WTF Is Smokey Bear Smoking?

 

Smokey Bear is celebrating 80 years of preventing wildfires together.

 

Yeah, nice job on preventing those California wildfires, dude.

17016: TRG Is Not Too Black.

 

Advertising Age reported TRG is taking the next step in its evolutionary progression, as an Old White Guy will succeed the Old White Guy CEO who replaced the Old White Guy Founder.

 

TRG Names New CEO As Glenn Dady Announces Retirement

 

Longtime principal Pete Lempert is set to succeed Dady on March 31

 

By Lindsay Rittenhouse

 

TRG has named longtime principal Pete Lempert as its new CEO, effective March 31, as Glenn Dady announces his retirement.

 

Dady has been CEO since 2019 and is set to retire after 45 years with the Dallas-based independent agency. Lempert first joined TRG in 1994 and became principal in 1996. He also added the titles of chief development officer and managing principal in 2024, according to the agency.

 

Lempert “has the perfect combination of creativity and business acumen,” Dady said in a statement. “He is a proven leader who has consistently delivered results for our clients while improving the employee experience and culture within the agency.”

 

In his 31 years at the agency, Lempert has led business for brands including Corona, Nokia, Advance Auto Parts, Amstel Beer, Charles Schwab and Orkin.

 

“It’s an honor to lead this incredible independent agency into our next chapter,” Lempert said in a statement, adding that “TRG and the marketplace have shifted dramatically over the past five years. ... We are well positioned for the future, where bold ideas will be nurtured to succeed in a rapidly changing marketplace.”

 

TRG’s current client list includes Charles Schwab, America’s Best Eyecare + Eyewear, Scripps Health, Sewell Automotive Cos., World’s Best Cat Litter and Nature’s Own.

 

TRG rebranded from The Richards Group in 2022, distancing itself from its founder Stan Richards, who stepped down in October 2020 following a racist remark he made during an internal meeting. Dady, who had worked alongside Richards for 39 years and took the reins from him, was tasked with addressing the fallout from the founder’s actions, including a string of client losses and employee departures.

 

Last year, TRG lost longtime client Stellantis-owned Ram, one of the few big-name clients that stuck by TRG after the 2020 backlash. Stagwell’s Doner won lead creative duties for Ram in December following a Stellantis U.S. agency review.

17015: Cannes Lions, Cannes Liars.

 

MediaPost reported Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity awarded the first ‘Creative Country Of The Year’ trophy to Brazil—a place notorious for scam ads, cultural cluelessness, and countrywide racism. It feels like Time ‘Person Of The Year’ going to Donald Trump.

 

Brazil Is Named Cannes Lions First ‘Creative Country Of The Year’

 

By Steve McClellan

 

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has unveiled a new award — Creative Country Of The Year — and the first recipient is Brazil, which will be honored at the festival in June. 

 

The organization said that the annual accolade recognizes a country’s consistent success at the Festival as well as “a country’s exceptional and enduring commitment to creativity that drives progress and growth.”

 

As part of that recognition this year, the 2025 Festival will feature Brazilian creative showcases, celebratory events, dedicated stage talks and Brazilian-led activations across the City of Cannes, including the return of FilmBrazil, which will host a networking event.

 

Sponsoring this year’s award is Brazilian daily newspaper Estadão, a long-time supporter of the Festival and which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year.  

 

Brazil won its first Lions at the 1971 Festival, collecting two Bronze Lions for Cinema and a Silver Lion for Television. In 1975 it brought home its first Gold Lions, and in 1993 it was awarded its first Grand Prix for ‘The Guarana Diet Campaign’ by Dm9 Publicidade for Guarana Antarctica. Since then, it has gone on to win 1911 Lions, 20 of which have been Grands Prix. 
 
In 1972, Alex Perissinoto served as the first Brazilian Juror, and Christina Carvalho Pinto, the first woman to lead a multinational communication corporation in Latin America — the Young & Rubicam Group — served as the first female Juror from Brazil in 1990. To date, more than 400 Brazilians have served on Cannes Lions Juries. Brazil’s Marcello Serpa brought home Latin America’s first Grand Prix and was honored with the prestigious Lion of St Mark in 2016. 
 
Washington Olivetto, who died last year, was known as the ‘Godfather of Brazilian Advertising’ and winner of Brazil’s first Gold Lion and more than 50 Lions across his career. A special tribute will be made to him at the Festival.