17553: Equinox And Its White Advertising Agency Are Sweating Over Racist Workout.

Advertising Age reported on an Equinox campaign featuring imagery publicly condemned as racist Asian stereotypes.

Based on the corporate response, Equinox apparently agrees with the protestors, as the ads are being fully pulled and official apologies have been formally posted.

The responsible White advertising agency—Angry Gods—also admitted to cultural cluelessness. Plus, Angry Gods pledged charitable donations to the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. Expect scholarships to follow in performative style.

Ironically, the campaign theme reads, “Question Everything But Yourself.”

Equinox and Angry Gods failed to question everything while executing the work. And the co-conspirators will probably not question themselves for being insular, insensitive, ignorant racists.

Equinox pulls AI ad after creators call out racist Asian stereotypes

By Gillian Follet

Equinox, the luxury fitness company, has pulled an AI-generated out-of-home ad and apologized after dozens of Asian content creators accused it of perpetuating racist stereotypes.

The ad, part of a campaign that broke in January, featured an AI-generated image of an Asian woman’s head mounted on a metal rod, with a hand pressing a thumb between her lips; the image was juxtaposed with a real photo of a different woman, including her exposed torso. Over the past two weeks, creators across Instagram and TikTok have condemned the ad as dehumanizing and fetishistic.

“Asian women have already been treated as dolls, submissive sex machines, anime girls, robots, decorative objects [and] mail-order fantasies for decades now,” said artist and content creator Eunnuri Lee in a video posted Friday. “We are constantly positioned as hypersexual beings and also not fully human.”

Lifestyle creator @relishwithreese called the ad “so disturbing” in a video uploaded earlier this month, questioning what message Equinox was attempting to convey. Soogia, a food creator with nearly 3 million total followers who uses only her first name online, called the ad a “literal embodiment” of the sexualization and objectification of Asian women. And Ed Choi, a creator and podcaster, went further, directly calling out Equinox’s chief marketing and digital officer, Bindu Shah, in a video criticizing the ad for “overly sexualiz[ing] Asian women.”

Though conversation around the ad spiked over the past two weeks, it originated as part of the company’s “Question Everything But Yourself” campaign, launched in January. Made with Los Angeles-based design and strategy agency Angry Gods, the ads addressed the proliferation of AI imagery online by pairing absurd AI creations—Pope Francis in a puffer jacket, a high-heel-wearing Justin Trudeau wrapped around a stripper pole—with images of real people. The idea was to position human strength as a counterpoint to digital fakery.

The ads ran across social, digital and out-of-home placements.

Equinox told creators in comments and DMs last week that it was “in the process” of “fully remov[ing]” the ad from OOH placements. The ad has been taken down from 10 Equinox club locations across New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco where it was still on display, an Equinox spokesperson confirmed today.

“This campaign was designed to explore the false realities created by AI and social media, including fake leaders, fake bodies, fake food and fake robots,” another spokesperson for the company said in an email. “While that was the creative goal, we recognize there was an unintended impact, and we apologize for that. We made the decision more than a week ago to fully remove the image—a choice guided by our core values of inclusivity, mutual respect and empathy, which ensure the Equinox community is a place where everyone is welcome.”

The agency, Angry Gods, also apologized for the offending image in an Instagram post shared Friday, then edited the statement the same day after facing criticism for initially referring to the backlash as a “discussion.” 

      

“Whatever we intended, an artificial, eroticized Asian woman’s face is not a neutral symbol of ‘fake,’” the agency stated. “It carries a history, and we should have seen that before the work ever shipped.” The agency will be donating $5,000 to the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, with agency founder and CEO Krish Menon contributing an additional $5,000 to the organization, Angry Gods stated.

Some OOH displays from the campaign, including the ad at the center of the backlash, had remained up for months in cities such as New York before Equinox removed them. While some creators had occasionally discussed the ad since it went up in January, Equinox earlier this month posted a video of its gym on New York’s Bond Street, where the ad was prominently displayed in one of the windows. The video has since been deleted.

Several of the creators who criticized the ad, including Choi, pointed out that the unsettling image of an Asian woman’s disembodied head didn’t match the surreal yet playful tone of the rest of the campaign.

“Hey, Equinox, if you want me to ‘question everything,’ I’m gonna ask: why the f*ck did you … think [this] was a good idea?” Lee said in her video. “Why did you need to use an Asian woman’s body? And I’ll also ask this: who the f*ck was in that marketing room?”

The controversy around the ad echoes the backlash American Eagle faced almost a year ago, when its Sydney Sweeney campaign was criticized as racist and overly sexual. American Eagle stood by the campaign, with Craig Brommers, the retailer’s chief marketing officer, later telling Ad Age that the polarizing campaign actually boosted the brand’s business.

17552: FYI Stagwell Q2 BS.

  

MediaPost reported White holding company Stagwell experienced the biggest Q2 in its history.

“Stagwell was founded as a tech-forward challenger to the legacy players for the vision of providing customers with everything from global full service to platform self-service solutions,” gushed Stagwell CEO Mark Penn, adding the Q2 performance “is validation of these founding principles.”

Sounds like Stagwell adopted the founding principles of all holding companies—except Stagwell is smaller, dumber, and worse than the rest.

Stagwell Q2 Driven By Digital Transformation, Political

By Steve McClellan

Stagwell reported second-quarter net revenue of $632 million, up 6% with organic growth (excluding M&A and currency impact) of 5%. 

The company reported a record $171 million (annualized revenue) in net new business wins for the quarter and $540 million in wins over the last twelve months. Wins in the quarter included IBM, Adobe, Mondelez and Heineken. 

The company reiterated full-year net revenue growth guidance of between 8% and 12% and upgraded its earnings-per-share forecast to between $1.03 and $1.17. It did not provide a net organic revenue growth guidance for the full year.   

“This was the biggest second quarter in the history of the company,” CEO Mark Penn told investors and analysts on an earnings call Thursday morning.  

“Stagwell was founded as a tech forward challenger to the legacy players for the vision of providing customers with everything from global full service to platform self-service solutions,” he added. Performance in Q2 “is validation of these founding principles.” 

The standout performance was delivered by the company’s digital transformation operation (essentially Code And Theory and Instrument), which posted an 18% net organic growth gain for the period. Communications (PR and political consulting) was up 12%.  

Those were the two biggest drivers of growth for the company in Q2. Media and marketing advisory firm Madison & Wall noted that “activity at the rest of the business was much more tame, with Media & Commerce (i.e. Assembly) up 1.0%, The Marketing Cloud (the company’s smallest segment) up 4.1%, and Marketing Services (the largest segment at 37% of net revenue) up just 0.5% organically.” 

M&W noted: “This marks two consecutive quarters of flat growth for Marketing Services, the segment that houses the creative agency networks 72 and Sunny and Anomaly along with Harris Poll and NRG, which is a meaningful deceleration from the 6.6% organic growth in 3Q25.”

By region, the U.S. was up 7% and the U.K. posted a 13% gain.   

Adjusted pre-tax earnings was $109 million in Q2, up 15%, which Penn attributed to “continued focus on cost management.” 

M&W noted that Stagwell did not explicitly disclose political revenues, which likely represented a 2% bump in reported organic revenue. “Consequently, the as-reported 5% organic net revenue growth was likely closer to 3% on a basis that’s comparable to other agency groups — still stronger than most of them, other than Publicis.” 

17551: Popeyes Adds More White Meat To Its Marketing Menu.

 

Advertising Age reported Popeyes shook up its roster of White marketing firms, appointing White non-advertising-agency Anomaly to handle US creative duties.

In recent years, Popeyes experienced declining sales, prompting a revised strategy to improve its execution, simplify its menu, and better communicate its value proposition.

Gee, seems like things were fine when Annie the Chicken Queen ruled the Louisiana Kitchen.

Popeyes names Anomaly its US creative agency as part of a broader roster overhaul

By Brian Bonilla

Popeyes has appointed Anomaly as its new U.S. creative agency of record as the chicken chain looks to sharpen its marketing around its core menu and value positioning following a prolonged stretch of sales declines.

As part of the broad overhaul of its roster, Popeyes also named LaForce as its U.S. communications agency, Angry Butterfly as its creative agency of record in Canada and Massive Rocket to lead its CRM and customer lifecycle marketing. Angry Butterfly had already started working on the business earlier this year. The agencies join existing media agency PHD and shopper marketing partner 500 Degrees.

The U.S. review was managed by Jeffries Consulting, while Graphic Content Consulting oversaw the Canadian search. Stagwell’s Anomaly did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The appointments mark the end of Popeyes’ relationship with McKinney, which had led the brand’s creative business in the U.S. and Canada since 2023. “Popeyes has been an incredible partner and we’re proud of the work we created together,” a McKinney spokesperson previously told Ad Age. “While we chose not to participate in the review, we wish the Popeyes team continued success.”

Popeyes framed the agency shifts as a move to further its focus on food quality, its Cajun and Creole roots and its affordability. “Popeyes is built on bold Louisiana flavor and a deep connection to our guests,” Matt Rubin, chief marketing officer of Popeyes U.S. and Canada, said in a statement. “These partners were chosen to help us do what we do best, better: bringing our food quality and brand character to life consistently for every guest, every visit.”

Rubin took over the chain’s marketing in January, following the departure of Bart LaCount, who is now CMO of Driven Brands. Jeff Klein, who oversaw Popeyes’ 2023 appointment of McKinney during his tenure as CMO and later served as president of Popeyes U.S. and Canada, earlier this year joined Subway, where he currently serves as its U.S. CMO. (Subway is currently in the midst of its own agency review process.)

The agency shakeup comes as Popeyes, the nation’s 14th-largest restaurant chain according to Technomic data, works to reverse declining sales. Popeyes’ U.S. comparable sales fell 2.9% in 2025, followed by a 6.5% decline in the first quarter of 2026, parent company Restaurant Brands International reported in May. By comparison, sibling chain Burger King posted a 5.8% increase in U.S. comparable sales during the first quarter.

Josh Kobza, the CEO of RBI, told investors in May that the company had identified the underlying issues at Popeyes and was focused on improving its execution, simplifying the menu around core offerings and better communicating the brand’s value proposition. Some of the changes, he said, include more field support to ensure more consistent training on brand standards, as well as refocusing the company’s menu on bone-in chicken, tenders and sandwiches.

“A tighter focus makes it easier to execute well in the restaurant and ensures our marketing is working harder behind fewer, stronger bets,” Kobza said in May.

The changes follow a modest increase in advertising investment. Popeyes’ U.S. measured media spending rose to approximately $182 million in 2025 from $169 million in 2024, according to MediaRadar.

RBI is set to report its second-quarter results on Aug. 6. 

17550: On Ogilvy US CEO CUL8R TTFN.

 

Advertising Age reported on the Ogilvy US CEO, who is bailing out of the White advertising agency after roughly nine months in the role.

Maybe winning Network of the Year at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity signaled mission accomplished.

David Ogilvy articulated his core philosophy on hiring as follows: If you hire people smaller than you, the company becomes a company of dwarfs; hire people bigger than you, and it becomes a company of giants.

Wonder what the iconic adman would think about his company being in giant flaming dumpster WPP, where hiring creates a revolving door of dwarfs.

Ogilvy US CEO to depart after less than a year in the post

By Ewan Larkin

Ogilvy U.S. CEO Lyndsey Corona is set to leave her post after less than a year at the WPP agency and is expected to pursue a new opportunity adjacent to the ad industry, Ad Age has learned.

Laurent Ezekiel, Ogilvy’s global CEO, will serve as interim CEO for North America, an agency spokesperson said. However, the agency does not plan to name a permanent replacement, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“Ogilvy thanks Lyndsey for her leadership and contributions to our clients and teams, and wishes her the very best in her next chapter,” the Ogilvy spokesperson said in a statement.

Corona’s late 2025 appointment followed an executive reshuffle in Ogilvy’s top ranks. In September, Devika Bulchandani, then Ogilvy’s global CEO, moved upstairs to WPP as chief operating officer. Ezekiel succeeded her at Ogilvy and subsequently installed Corona in November, giving her oversight of the storied creative agency’s largest region.

Corona joined amid a turbulent stretch for Ogilvy, which cut roughly 5% of its workforce last year as part of a restructuring. One of her core focuses was to simplify complexity for marketers and better integrate the agency’s various disciplines. WPP itself is working through a multiyear turnaround, including layoffs and the formation of WPP Creative, a unit designed to house Ogilvy and VML, among other shops.

Before Ogilvy, Corona served as WPP’s global growth lead on Verizon. Earlier in her career, Corona worked as president and partner at independent creative boutique Slap Global. Her experience also spans agencies including Stagwell’s Forsman & Bodenfors and Omnicom’s McCann.

17549: On The Political Fallout Of Bad-Boy Behavior, Blatant Bias, And Bashing Bud Light.

 

At the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, President Donald J. Trump delivered a disturbing monologue that included comparing CNN News Anchor Kaitlan Collins to transgender actor and influencer Dylan Mulvaney, making repeated references to the latter’s infamous Bud Light promotion.

Trump later shared the social media post depicted above, extending the crass comedy routine.

Now, Trump and his sycophantic supporters continue to position the Commander-in-Chief as a famously successful businessman. Yet would any executive—even in a White advertising agency—be allowed to present such words, visuals, and actions without consequence today? Behavior like this typically results in immediate reprimand, rejection, and termination.

Sorry, Trump is a thoroughly outdated businessman, representing cartoonish characteristics of the Mad Men era.

POTUS proudly declared, “We ended DEI in America!” Despite the vehement denials, it appears the man also resurrected, reinvigorated, and reinvented racism.

What’s more, will Trump’s latest antics reignite the political protesting, bashing, and boycotting for Bud Light?

The entire spectacle catapults Trump to probably repeat his White Man Of The Year honor.

17548: Mattel Puts All Its Media Toys In One Box.

 

MediaPost reported Mattel consolidated its global media duties with Publicis Groupe’s Spark Foundry.

Mattel declined to explain the move. The toy company probably just preferred the Barbies and Kens working at the White media agency.

Mattel Consolidates Global Media With Spark Foundry

By Steve McClellan

Mattel has consolidated its global media assignment with Publicis Groupe’s Spark Foundry. 

The toy and family entertainment company spent $522 million on advertising and promotion last year, according to an SEC filing. 

In 2019, Mattel split its media account between Spark Foundry and IPG’s UM. At that time Spark Foundry was awarded the U.S and Canada and UM was selected for regions outside North America. 

Mattel confirmed the consolidation but declined to provide any context explaining the move. 

17547: Note To Glassdoor—Try Creating Advertising That Doesn’t Suck.

WTF is this digital promotion trying to communicate? Glassdoor Recruiter can help people land remote jobs, allowing you to sneak off on company time? Or when reaching out to a Glassdoor Recruiter, they’ll never be at their desk, so expect to get ghosted…?

17546: On Fearing Wokeness And Fearlessly Awakening Racism.

 

Adweek published a perspective arguing for investing in diverse media with cash versus crumbs. There’s nothing new in the content, which is titled, “By Fearing Wokeness, Marketers Are Hitting the Snooze Button on Growth.”

 

No, marketers don’t fear wokeness; rather, they are hitting systemic racism with eyes wide open.

 

By Fearing Wokeness, Marketers Are Hitting the Snooze Button on Growth

 

Investing in diverse media is not woke—it’s following the money.

 

By DéVon Christopher Johnson

 

America is celebrating its 250th anniversary this year. Between the speeches about 1776, the stubborn fight for independence, and building a new nation, we must recognize the vital role inclusion played then and still plays today. 

Before we were the United States, we were 13 colonies with different dialects, agriculture, economic, and social norms. They decided to come together, combining their differences as an asset to push out a tyrannical monarchy in favor of representative democracy. Then as now, this nation’s greatness belongs to its diverse population—the very audience media budgets are supposed to capture.

Yet the corporate pledges of 2020 have quietly vanished without the same fanfare and press releases that had heralded their arrival. It is clear now that funding diverse-owned media was driven by temporary sympathy rather than a structural business model. But sympathy is a fleeting foundation; it has no contracts or renewals, and quickly evaporates when the political climate shifts. 

Those brands were never truly doing business with us. At best, they were doing temporary penance. Which has now expired. 

Sympathy is for cards. The moral case for inclusion remains solid. But within a corporation, it’s as unreliable as the weather in April, shifting with the storms and vanishing with clear skies. 

Corporations rely on comfortable profitability rather than durability, so we must shift the focus from a moral plea to a rigorous economic argument. 

Good thing the math supports the same conclusion.

The multicultural market is worth $5.3 trillion. Despite this immense scale, the advertising sector allocates less than 2% of its total budgets to diverse-owned media platforms. These outlets hold the trust of the fastest-growing consumer segments. Instead of working toward the ANA’s 6.5% benchmark established for 2025, the industry spent the entire year locked in debates over whether such targets should even exist. 

Under normal market conditions, a gap this wide between market potential and actual funding would be seized upon as a classic arbitrage opportunity. Instead, having been stamped with the “diversity” label, this highly lucrative audience segment is cast aside as a political liability rather than valued for what it actually is: the single most underpriced connection in the modern media landscape. 

The industry is conflating DEI with any marketing spend that targets diverse communities. DEI is strictly an HR and workforce imperative, designed to ensure internal staffing mirrors the broader population. Whatever your political stance, that internal representation matters. 

On the flip side, investing in multicultural media is pure marketing. A diverse consumer base is not a social cause; it is a vital market. Marketers must focus strictly on the numbers: reach, resonance, and ROI. When chief marketing officers scale back multicultural ad buys under the guise of “DEI being under fire,” they commit a fundamental category error. It allows external ideological skirmishes to quietly override media plans and disregard actual spreadsheets.

We saw this play out in 2025, where the market graded these choices in real time. Facing identical external pressures, two major retailers chose entirely different paths. In January 2025, Target capitulated by rolling back its DEI-focused initiatives in hiring and its supply chain, triggering an 11-week freefall in foot traffic; its now-former CEO later conceded on an earnings call that retreating directly caused the revenue decline and wiped out billions in market value. 

Conversely, Costco stood its ground by handing the choice to its shareholders, who resoundingly rejected an anti-DEI proposal with over 98% of the vote. The very week its competitor’s traffic plummeted, this steadfast retailer experienced a surge in foot traffic. Two identical situations, but diametrically opposed decisions and results.

Ultimately, both “woke” and “anti-woke” are shallow, reactionary ideologies. Being truly awake is an active discipline. It means deeply understanding who your audience is, what they consume, who they trust, and where they will stand two decades from now. The brands that eagerly paraded their “values” in 2020 only to drop them in 2025 were merely sleepwalking, then hit the snooze button on their own consumer base.

For half a decade, marketers were told to fear wokeness. Few bothered to actually wake up.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense mobilized a reluctant nation toward revolution by masterfully balancing commercial interests with moral duty. Now, as it was then, America’s true strength is rooted in all of its people, including those currently excluded from media plans. 

I challenge marketers to summon the very quality Paine championed: courage, which is currently in desperately short supply. Now that ethical responsibility and business intelligence have finally converged, the sole remaining ingredient is simply the raw nerve to act.

17545: On The True Meaning Of AI At Havas.

 

Adweek published a report titled: ‘No Longer AI Losers’: Havas Leans Into AI-First Identity as North America Revenue Grows

 

Havas has an AI-first identity? Only if AI stands for Ancestral Insularity.

17544: On Banning Advertising For Junk Food And Junk Perspectives.

 

MediaPost reported the 4As, ANA, and AAF sent a letter to lawmakers expressing concerns over a proposed bill that would ban advertising junk food to kids under 13, citing First Amendment rights as part of the opposing argument.

 

When industry revenue is at risk, the trade organizations prop up First Amendment rights.

 

Yet when DEIBA+ and Civil Rights come up, there is only political, patronizing, performative propaganda. Or crickets.

 

Ad Groups Raise Concerns Over Bill Banning Junk Food Ads To Children

 

By Wendy Davis

A bill that would ban junk food advertising to children under 13 raises “significant” First Amendment concerns, ad industry groups said in a letter sent to lawmakers Tuesday.

The Childhood Diabetes Reduction Act of 2026, introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), includes provisions that would prohibit companies from marketing or advertising junk food “in a manner that reasonably appears to be directed at children.”

The measure “would regulate truthful, non-misleading advertising concerning products that may lawfully be sold in commerce,” the Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies and American Advertising Federation say in a letter sent to Sanders and Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana).

The groups add that the bill “may have the practical effect of discouraging lawful advertising for ordinary food and beverage products, including, for example, restaurant advertising and advertising for products lawfully sold in commerce, even where the intended audience is not primarily children.”

The bill provides that ads will be considered child-directed if they use “themes or promotional strategies that appeal to children” — such as “fun or fantasy” themes, cartoon characters, social media influencers, free toys, interactive games or apps.

The ad groups write that those factors “are inherently subjective, making it difficult for regulated entities to determine in advance what advertising conduct is prohibited.”

The organizations add that many of those factors “are commonly used in mainstream advertising regardless of the intended audience.”

The bill also provides that ads are child-directed if placed in media where children make up at least 30% of the audience.

The ad groups say that threshold is low enough to “encompass a substantial portion of mainstream media.”

“While well-intentioned, this bill misses the mark by imposing broad restrictions on protected commercial speech that may extend well beyond advertising directed at children, while relying on vague standards that create substantial uncertainty regarding the scope of the prohibition,” the organizations write.

The bill would also require warning labels on junk food.

Some advocacy groups, including the nonprofit National Center for Health Research, support the bill. That organization said this week that the measure “would greatly improve children’s health by banning ads for junk food that are aimed at children.”