17656: On Haters Gonna Hate.

 

MediaPost reported on the “Hate Has No Home Here” campaign from Blue Square Alliance Against Hate in partnership with the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA).

If “Hate Has No Home Here” and “Love Has No Labels,” what does indifference not have?

Relating to DEIBA+ in Adland, “Indifference Has No Opposition.”

OAAA Teams With Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance For ‘Hate Has No Home Here’ Campaign

By Steve McClellan

The Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) today announced a partnership with Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, founded by business magnate and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, to launch a nationwide public service advertising (PSA) campaign encouraging Americans to stand together against hate.  

The initiative calls on OAAA members across the country to donate out of home (OOH) advertising inventory for the campaign, dubbed “Hate Has No Home Here.” 

The effort comes as Blue Square, founded by Kraft in 2019 to combat the alarming rise in antisemitism, has evolved into a broader movement dedicated to confronting hatred and intolerance directed at any community.  

The blue square is considered a universal symbol of solidarity in the fight against hate. The campaign’s creative will appear across donated billboards, digital screens, transit advertising and other OOH formats, leveraging the industry’s national footprint to make the message visible in communities across the country. 

The initiative is spearheaded by Drew Katz, CEO of Interstate Outdoor Advertising and a member of OAAA’s Board of Directors. He’s also been a supporter of Blue Square Alliance Against Hate.  

Anna Bager, President and CEO of OAAA, said that the medium’s presence in communities across America provides “a unique opportunity” to make the “hate has no home here” message visible on a national scale. 

Added Kraft, “By joining forces with the out of home advertising industry, we can bring this message into the everyday lives of millions of Americans. Every billboard is an opportunity to remind someone that they are not alone and that standing against hate is a responsibility we share.” 

OAAA members interested in participating can access campaign creative assets and learn more at oaaa.org/public-service.

17637: On The Trend For Pitching Pitches.

 

Advertising Age reported Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun opined on the “trend” of White holding companies being awarded global brand assignments sans traditional pitches.

As previously noted, account reviews for major chunks of business have become closed affairs, exclusive privileges available only to a handful of White holding companies.

Because M&A reduced the number of big players, clients are left with even fewer choices.

The commoditization of Adland makes the limited options indistinguishable too—all White conglomerates look alike.

So, it’s not surprising matters progressed to the next level—that is, shootouts are deemed pointless exercises.

During the Omnicom acquisition of IPG last year, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)—a UK regulatory organization—launched an investigation to determine if the deal would impact industry competition.

The acquisition was ultimately approved, yet competition has clearly been impacted.

Corporate Cultural Collusion is increasingly the norm—standard operating procedure now openly recognized and executed by conspiring participants.

Non-White advertising agencies—as well as most independent White advertising agencies—are effectively eliminated from consideration. Or relegated to consultants of color and/or Prime Redlining victims.

What’s happening today is not a trend; rather, it’s an evolution of underhanded practices and fortification of systemic racism.

Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun on why more clients are choosing holding company solutions without pitches

By Brian Bonilla

Publicis Groupe is seeing major marketers move away from formal account reviews, instead opting for in-depth conversations with agencies they already consider the right fit. Arthur Sadoun, its chairman and CEO, attributed this trend to the consolidation of rival holding companies Omnicom and Interpublic Group of Cos., along with shifting technology needs from marketers.

“What I find remarkable—in terms of trend—is that you have more and more clients that know what they want to do,” Sadoun said in an interview, declining to comment on specific clients.

His comments come after Publicis won Microsoft and PepsiCo, two of this year’s major account moves, without traditional review processes.

Clients are now realizing “it’s way more efficient to spend their time and their money digging deeper and ‘kicking the tires,’ as they like to do, on the partner they are interested in, rather than this kind of tap-dancing beauty contest that we all know, that lasts for months, that is a distraction, and that at the end of the day normally gets you to the partner you were preferring at the beginning anyway,” he said.

The three largest global agency holding companies—Omnicom Group, Publicis Groupe and WPP—accounted for 91% of holding company media wins in the first half of 2026, up from 74% a year earlier, according to COMvergence data cited by Publicis. (Accenture Song, the industry’s No. 2 player behind Omnicom according to Ad Age Datacenter’s latest Agency Report, sits within consulting giant Accenture and therefore isn’t considered a traditional agency holding company.)

“I think we should all be very thankful to Omnicom for this move, because it is the entire industry that is benefiting from it today,” he said. The benefit of fewer players, he said, is that “there is a very clear differentiation in terms of positioning among the three,” which results in “an increasing number of clients who know exactly what they want for their business. And that means that they truly understand the difference between the different models.”

This clarity, he said, is boosting Publicis’ growth outlook. Publicis generated more than €400 million (over $446 million) in net new business during the first nine months of the year, the company reported today. It anticipates these wins to account for 2 percentage points of organic revenue growth in 2027.

Publicis reported organic net revenue growth of 5% in the third quarter and reaffirmed its full-year 2026 guidance of 4.5% to 5% organic net revenue growth.

Publicis also reported a client retention rate close to 100% for the first nine months of the year, which Sadoun said is more meaningful than individual account win announcements, which can create a misleading impression of an agency’s overall business performance. “This race for new-business press releases is a kiss of death,” he said. “Because it gives a false impression of dynamics, meaning what matters is not what you win; it’s the net between what you win and what you keep.”

He said new business contributes slightly more than a third of Publicis’ growth, with the remainder coming from existing client relationships. That dynamic is particularly evident in creative services. Publicis’ Intelligent Creativity business, which accounts for 25% of group net revenue, recorded low-single-digit organic revenue growth in the third quarter.

Sapient’s growing role in new business

Publicis is integrating its technology consulting business, Sapient, more closely with its media and creative operations to meet the rising demand for AI-driven marketing transformation. This approach is helping the company secure new assignments, often without the need for formal pitches, Sadoun said.

“We don’t have a brief where the AI transformation question is not raised,” he said. “And one of the reasons why we’re winning—and sometimes without pitches—is because not only do we have the data, but we have the engineers and the technology to make it work.”

In production, Sapient is developing technology that allows clients to customize content at scale using data. On the media side, it is helping clients modernize technology infrastructure to enable more personalized advertising. “Production is not about studios anymore,” Sadoun said. “We all have great studios. The question is: do you have the right tech platform to deliver at-scale customization connected with the data?”

The strategy is beginning to translate into improved performance for Sapient. Publicis’ technology business, which represents 13% of the holding company’s net revenue, returned to growth in the U.S. during the third quarter. Globally, the practice remained slightly negative as clients continued to delay more expensive enterprise transformation projects, but Publicis expects the business to resume growth in the fourth quarter.

17630: How To Partner With Non-White Advertising Agencies.

 

Advertising Age published probable Hispanic Heritage Month content providing pointers on partnering with multicrumbtual advertising agencies.

While the perspective spotlighted common mistakes, potential pitfalls, and marketing microaggressions, there were no blatant references to cultural cluelessness, crumbs, or Prime Redlining.

So, it sorta feels like whitewashing systemic racism.

When to partner with a multicultural agency—and how to structure the work

By Sabrina Sanchez

For many agencies, creating campaigns for multicultural audiences is a challenge. Some handle it in-house, translating existing work or trying to tack on cultural relevance at the end. But agencies that specialize in multicultural work say that approach leaves little room for cultural insight to shape the strategy. Ad Age asked three members of the Ad Age Small Agency Network with Hispanic and multicultural expertise—Cien+ (CulturePlus Group), BeautifulBeast and Macías Creative—when to call in a partner, how to divide the work and how to manage the client relationship. The following guide was assembled from their answers.

Step 1: Check when the work calls for a partner

Macías Creative leaders—Marcos Macias, founder and chief creative officer; Alex Macias, managing partner and chief operations officer; and Ernesto Ruiz, executive director of strategy and accounts—identified three situations that call for cultural expertise:

If the assignment explicitly targets Hispanic or multicultural audiences

Bring in a partner while developing the strategy.

If growth depends on a market where Hispanic consumers are a major economic force

Bring in cultural expertise, even if the brief does not explicitly name that audience. Macías Creative cited markets such as California, Texas, Florida, New York and the Southwest where winning with Hispanic consumers can be critical to growth.

If cultural nuance is central to the strategy or idea

Consider a multicultural agency partner, even if the brief does not name a particular audience. Macías Creative pointed to cultural spaces involving food, family, sports, music, identity and traditions—all of which are places where deeper fluency can help shape the work.

The agency also offered signs that a team may need outside expertise:

• If research is being used as a substitute for established cultural expertise.

• If a few Hispanic people on the team are being treated as proof of Hispanic marketing capability; that capability also requires dedicated expertise, experience, tools and processes.

• If the U.S. Hispanic market is being approached as one audience, without accounting for differences in country of origin, language preference or relationship to American culture.

Another sign, Macías Creative said, is asking someone at the end of the process whether the creative “feels right.” That person “probably needed a seat at the table much earlier.”

Flor Leibaschoff, BeautifulBeast’s co-founder and CCO, said general-market agencies should not wait for a sign; they should already be working with Hispanic and multicultural agencies. To her, a plan built around translating general-market work, rather than developing a strategy for the audience, already shows the need for a different approach.

Claudia Avans of Cien+ posed a broader question: “Do we have the right perspectives at the table for this opportunity?” Cultural insight can help an agency understand a particular audience, she said, and it can reveal shifts that matter to the wider market.

Step 2: Decide whether you’re creating or adapting

How an agency approaches its creative determines when a multicultural partner needs to join and what they can contribute.

If the work needs a new strategy, platform or idea that will resonate with Hispanic audiences

Bring the partner in from the beginning while the insight and creative direction are still being developed. “If a perspective could change the strategy, give it a chance to shape the strategy,” Avans said.

If the assignment involves adapting an existing idea

For an assignment focused on adapting an existing idea for a specific audience or market, bringing in that expertise later can sometimes make sense, Macías Creative said. Even then, Macías Creative said both agencies should discuss the audience’s needs and agree on their approach at the outset. The partner should help determine whether adaptation is the right assignment.

Joining early lets a partner help shape the insight, idea and plan. Once creative is underway, their role can narrow to changing what has already been decided. “They become translators and fixers instead of strategists,” Leibaschoff said. If collaboration cannot begin at the pitch or strategy stage, she said, bringing the partner in for the brief is the minimum.

Step 3: Agree on how the agencies will work together

The next decision is what expertise the assignment needs, and how each agency will contribute.

If the assignment calls for several kinds of expertise

Avans described several ways to assemble a team: a lead agency can bring a cultural partner into the strategy phase; two agencies can build the brief together and split leadership by expertise; a partner agency can join for a few critical sessions; or different partners can lead at different stages. A cultural agency might also bring in a technology, data, creator or community partner when the work calls for it.

If the question is who works directly with the client

Leibaschoff named three arrangements she has seen work: an introduction, where the general-market agency connects the partner agency with the client and lets it work with them directly on that part of the business; white-label work, where the partner agency works behind the scenes under the lead agency’s name; or a hybrid, where the partner meets the client but the lead agency keeps the relationship. Any arrangement can work “as long as it’s agreed on from the start,” she said. Cien+ has also worked both behind the scenes and directly with clients, depending on the assignment.

Macías Creative draws a different line. It will not take an assignment where its team has no direct client contact, at least for key meetings. The agency says passing cultural insights through another team can weaken the collaboration and reduce the partner agency to an execution role. One setup Macías Creative described involves a small senior team working alongside the lead agency from the strategy stage.

Before work begins, agree on who owns the client relationship, who presents the cultural insight, who makes decisions, how feedback and approvals move, how the work is credited, and how fees and billing will work.

Those choices can lead to different arrangements. In a healthcare partnership described by Cien+, the agencies led the general and Hispanic market work respectively and shared the client relationship. On a consumer goods launch described by Macías Creative, the lead agency kept the client relationship and led strategy, creative and execution, while a senior Macías team contributed cultural insight from the strategy stage.

Step 4: Avoid the mistakes that weaken partnerships

The agencies pointed to five recurring problems:

1. Bringing in expertise too late—or giving it too little time. Once strategy and creative are set, a cultural partner has little room to shape either.

2. Leaving roles and fees unclear. Responsibilities, decisions, client contact and billing need to be settled before work begins.

3. Falling back on translation under deadline pressure. Even with a partner agency involved, a team may revert to translating general-market work, reducing that partner to a translation role.

4. Creating a one-person department. A single Hispanic employee is expected to cover strategy, creative, media and social listening. “That’s a lot of hats for one head,” Leibaschoff said, “and it’s not fair to them or to the work.”

5. Treating the partner as competition or as an execution vendor. “If you value the expertise enough to bring in a partner, give them a real seat at the table,” Macías Creative said.

Step 5: Consider what the partnership can add

Sharing work with another agency may raise concerns about revenue and the client relationship. Leibaschoff argued that the greater risk is failing to help a client pursue the opportunity: the client may eventually find someone else who will. “It’s not about splitting the pie; it’s about making the pie bigger,” she said.

Macías Creative made a similar point: work that initially looks like shared revenue may lead to additional, dedicated budget for multicultural efforts.

Avans framed the benefit in terms of what the lead agency can solve for its client: “The lead agency becomes even more valuable because of the ecosystem it can bring together.”

This story used AI-assisted tools to summarize and structure insights from Ad Age’s original reporting. It is based solely on the responses Ad Age received for this story, and was reviewed by editors and reporters to ensure accuracy, clarity and context.

17609: Converse Defender Tells Everyone To KKKalm Down.

 

Adweek published yet another perspective on the Converse lynching controversy, allowing an author to figuratively hang himself.

The color commentator closed by remarking, “I fully expect this column to incur similar wrath from the sanctimonious corners of the internet where offence is easily taken and blame must then be immediately apportioned.”

Okay. Challenge accepted.

For starters, the author seems oblivious to having assumed a stereotypical role in the matter. That is, he’s the Angry Old White Guy.

It’s a waste of time attempting to school the culturally clueless. Although it’s particularly annoying in this case, as the author boasts having a PhD in Marketing and hypes his MiniMBA programs.

He’s clearly out to educate the masses versus consider the opportunity for a teachable moment. Self-absorption always trumps self-enlightenment, self-improvement, and self-awareness.

The final proclamation underscored his ignorance: “It just requires everyone to calm down.”

Yes, calm down despite once again experiencing the lashing disrespect of an industry historically mired in systemic racism.

Calm down by being told how to respond to offensive material by a bona fide representative of the offenders.

Calm down when even the unintentionally biased avoid accountability as intentionally as card-carrying KKK members.

From Converse to Ed Sheeran, Let’s End These Tedious Apology Tours

Converse, Oxford United, and Ed Sheeran all got dragged through the same ritual for mistakes that were accidental or not even theirs

By Mark Ritson

It was a rotten week for Converse. 

On Sept. 3, the Nike-owned brand posted a new campaign on social media for the Chuck 70 X built around Karina, the very famous singer from K-pop group aespa. 

In the key image she stands in a long white skirt, wearing the shoes and holding a second pair in one hand, framed by a spotlight cut in the shape of the Converse star.

Two weeks passed.

Then, someone noticed that the edge of the star projected onto her skirt made a shape a bit like a Klan hood. And that the shoes hanging from her hand could be read as a body. Then a second image surfaced, from Converse Malaysia, of models on a ladder reaching for sneakers strung from a tree branch. 

The two pictures welded together online into a single verdict.

Converse was now running “the most racist ad of the season.” The work was “shocking,” “abhorrent,” “repugnant.” Even if it was unintentional, the fact that it had gotten past legal, marketing, and leadership was itself an unforgivable offence.

Converse apologized within a day, pulled everything and promised to do better, but not enough for Louisiana Congressman Troy Carter. 

“Lynching is not a creative concept. The Ku Klux Klan is not an aesthetic,” he raged. “This campaign should never have been created, approved or released.” Nike and Converse, he said, should explain publicly how the images had passed through their approval process.

Step back from the heat for a second. Nobody seriously thought, for even a moment, that a Korean photographer shooting a Korean pop star for the Korean market was evoking the Klan. It was an accident. And the instant the claims were made, Converse said sorry, and pulled the work. 

Which prompts a question nobody in the pile-on bothered to ask. 

What else was Converse meant to do here?

It didn’t matter, though, as a wrong had been done, and offence taken. It didn’t matter whether it accidental or not, or whether an apology had already been offered.

Penalties must apply. 

The same script ran in England last week around the same time at Oxford United, a third tier football club. The team was founded in 1893, and a new range of American college-style clothing celebrated the fact with UNITED across the shoulders and a big 93 beneath it.

The collection went live on Sept. 11.

Almost immediately, someone inside the club worked out what a United 93 shirt looks like on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. The range and the posts promoting it were gone within two hours. That should have been the end of it.

It wasn’t. A week later, the club was being roasted on CNN, ESPN, and the Washington Post and had issued a full confession. The shirts “should not have reached the point of sale and we take full responsibility for not undertaking proper due diligence.” Again, nobody suggested any of this was deliberate. And again, the mistake was fixed within hours. But still an apology was required.

Then there is Ed Sheeran

On Saturday night, Sheeran delivered the most extreme entry in this new genre: an apology for something he demonstrably did not do. 

In Philadelphia, before playing a note, he stood in front of 60,000 people and said, “I am making mistakes and I’m so, so sorry.” 

He was apologizing for a rapper’s politics, a stadium owner’s ban, and a promoter’s decision, none of which were his, to an audience that just wanted to hear Shape of You. 

A man who has spent his career steering clear of every political issue going found himself in the middle of the most intractable one on earth. Through no fault of his own he found himself apologizing.

We have reached a very low point. The combination of crisis management, the fragmentation of culture and the insidious effects of social media have turned this decade into an unpleasant, sanctimonious place. Where the only option for innocent people is to eat humble pie with a double serving of reputational rescue slathered on top.

Converse set out to offend no one, and when it did, it made amends the same day. Oxford United made an awful accidental mistake and fixed it immediately, then apologised anyway. Ed Sheeran just wants to play music but must first apologize for things he did not do and does not understand. 

I fully expect this column to incur similar wrath from the sanctimonious corners of the internet where offence is easily taken and blame must then be immediately apportioned. 

Real harm, deliberately done, deserves an apology and consequences, and brands that drag their feet deserve everything they get. A mistake with no intent behind it deserves a correction. That’s all. 

“We’ve withdrawn it” is a complete sentence. It does not need “we understand.” It does not need “we’ll do better.” It just requires everyone to calm down.

17593: On Zapping Callaway And Good Good Golf.

Adweek published more seemingly self-promotional schadenfreude from the Chief Marketing Officer of Zappi, who threw her sanctimonious soapbox at Callaway and Good Good Golf for their misogynistic marketing.

The author made one semi-insightful point: “The problem is that the infrastructure hasn’t kept up. Brands are producing more content, across more platforms, with more partners, for more audiences. The old model of heavily researching a few major campaigns wasn’t built for hundreds of smaller decisions.”

This is followed by shameless self-promotion, as the CMO presents Zappi AI services as capable of screening content quickly and efficiently.

There are key flaws in the proposal.

First, the old model never heavily researched a few major campaigns—at least not through a culturally competent lens. Indeed, work was evaluated with an exclusive, predominately White perspective.

Second, AI has already been called out for its cultural cluelessness. The real problem in this area involves technology and algorithms created with an exclusive, predominately White perspective.

Third, the root problem—which Adland has absolutely failed to address for at least 75 years—is the global DEIBA+ issue. That is, White advertising agencies—and companies like Zappi—perpetuate an exclusive, predominately White perspective.

The problem is that the infrastructure is built on systemic racism.

Callaway and Good Good’s Ad Was So Bad, Even AI Audiences Sounded the Alarm

Callaway and Good Good are arguing about approval, but should be arguing about why no process existed to flag the video before it aired

By Nataly Kelly

You know the clip by now. Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark shoves fellow creator Alexis Miestowski to the ground as she reaches for his new Callaway driver. He stands over her and tells her not to touch it.

The ad is gone. So is the partnership. 

Retailers pulled Good Good merchandise, the company withdrew as title sponsor of a PGA Tour event, while Callaway pledged $1 million to organizations working to prevent violence against women in an effort to wash away the controversy. 

And the entire public argument is about approval. Callaway CEO Chip Brewer says the video was produced by Good Good but signed off by Callaway, and that “that approval should have never happened.” 

On Friday morning, Good Good CEO Matt Kendrick broke an 11-year Twitter silence at 3:38 a.m. to accuse Callaway of asking for the ad, approving it, then dropping his company in a “coordinated media blitz.” Asked whether he’d sue, he replied: “Not opposed.”

Both men are addressing the wrong questions. It’s not about who approved the ad; it’s how nobody and no process stopped it before it went live, when the tools to catch the warning signs cost less than the driver they’re selling. 

The story is much bigger than just one terrible ad

We’ve entered a dynamic where brands and creators need each other. Brands need creators to reach communities they can’t, while creators need to monetize their audiences.

That relationship comes with risk, as brands put decades or centuries of hard-earned equity into the hands of culturally nimble third parties, and ask them to translate it for new audiences. That’s inherently risky. It’s also increasingly necessary.

Creators aren’t the problem. The problem is that the infrastructure hasn’t kept up. Brands are producing more content, across more platforms, with more partners, for more audiences. The old model of heavily researching a few major campaigns wasn’t built for hundreds of smaller decisions.

An ad so bad even AI frowned upon it

The frustrating thing about the Good Good ad is that the warning signs weren’t particularly difficult to find. We tested the ad after it was pulled, first with U.S. consumers. It performed significantly below advertising norms on appeal, likelihood to drive behavior, brand fit, relevance, believability, and attention.

More telling was the reaction underneath those scores. Nearly one-third said there was something offensive, unpleasant, or disturbing about the ad. Shock was eight times higher than our norm. 

But let’s assume the Good Good and Callaway teams involved didn’t have the time, resources, or know-how to commission a traditional market research study for one piece of creator content. Fair enough. They at least could have tested the ad with AI.

So that’s what we did at Zappi. We ran the creative past 150 AI synthetic respondents trained on real consumer response data. We had answers back in just minutes. The ad received the lowest possible score (1/5) and even synthetic respondents could spot the warning signs about the content of the ad. Its recommendation, in hindsight, is almost unbearable to read: “Soften or clarify the physical moment so it reads as playful rather than awkward.”

Testing with humans allows you to feel the fire and know exactly how hot it was. But AI was a smoke detector that, if it had only been in place, would have told people to look more closely before the brand equity went down in flames.

Now, to be very clear, AI should never be the cultural arbiter deciding what’s acceptable, but when content moves faster than the infrastructure legacy brands have at their disposal, it can be an incredibly helpful early warning system that tells a human when something deserves a second look. 

What brand leaders should take from this

Who’s at fault here? Everybody involved. Who can learn from it? Marketers. Agencies. All of us.

Creator partnerships and the creator economy aren’t going away. Neither is the pressure to produce more content, faster, for increasingly fragmented audiences.

Brands need creators, and creators need brands. Both need better guardrails, frankly, to cover their own (brand) asse(t)s. 

For brands, those guardrails protect hard-earned equity. For creators, they protect the livelihood and audience they’ve spent years building. The lesson isn’t to slow creator marketing down until it resembles traditional advertising. It’s to build processes capable of moving just as fast as the media they’re meant to govern. And in this not-so-new reality, what the Callaway scandal makes clear is that AI already has an important role to play, but that many brands remain behind the curve.

17590: On The Exclusive Privileges Of PepsiCo.

This LinkedIn post spotlights numerous Fortune 500 CEOs who leveraged PepsiCo experience to land C-suite roles.

The headline reads: This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a pattern

Okay, but the pattern looks like lots of White men and White women enjoyed advantages at PepsiCo, along with a handful who perhaps benefited from the groundbreaking success of former PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi…?