Hasta La Creative!

This is a guest post by Meryl Draper, founder of Brooklyn’s Quirk Creative.

In advertising, we spend most of our time pitching women. We all know women make 85% of product purchases, and that brands spend millions researching their habits, beliefs and core values. And then, counter-intuitively, they hire mostly men to lead the advertising.

The gender disparity at ad agencies among commercial and creative directors is so wide—only 10-29 percent are women—that an industry-wide movement to correct it has taken off. From the 3% Movement to documentary filmmaker Alma Har’ell’s recent #FreeTheBid campaign, we’re reaching a moment of reckoning.

Women are launching a new paradigm entirely. One in which they circumvent the established protocol altogether and speak directly to each other.

For us, that meant hiring female crews for our video campaigns, especially those crafted to disrupt to two industries designed specifically for women: bras and tampons. It’s a logical way to do our part, that makes perfect sense for the brands we’ve worked with (ThirdLove and Lola, respectively).

The benefits of bringing more women behind the camera go well beyond gender parity. A female director not only means more girls and women on-screen and on the crew, it also means the messaging is more thought-provoking according to a 2012 study by the Sundance Institute and Women in Film Los Angeles (source).

When it came time to shoot videos for ThirdLove, the e-commerce company dedicated to making comfortable bras, we started by talking with more than 250 women to get clear on their bra-shopping pain points so we could incorporate those into our scripts.

ThirdLove wasn’t interested in selling sex, a la Victoria’s Secret. So we made the conscious choice to hire an all-female film crew from director to key grip, with the intention of creating a set that cultivated trust and sincerity. The end result was a series of matter-of-fact customer testimonials with realistic lighting and makeup—and no scantily-clad models.

In digital spots for LOLA, the feminine care brand committed to ingredient transparency, used real women instead of models in digital spots that highlighted their use of 100% organic cotton in all feminine hygiene products.

These are the kind of choices that Kat Gordon and her 3% Movement’s national conferences, mentoring and consulting events have influenced since they began in 2012.

And this year, #FreeTheBid’s Har’ell is already furthering that effort by gathering more than 130 signed women directors from all leading production companies to link them with ad agencies and brands. So far, BBDO Global, Pereira & O’Dell, Mother, J. Walter Thompson, 180LA, Joan, Phenomenon and DDB have all committed to the initiative.

Hollywood creatives are doing their part to shift the conversation too. After all, many of them started their careers in publicity and advertising. Sunday night’s introduction to “inclusion riders” via Frances McDormand was a high point of the night for women, people of color, LGBT and people with disabilities.

“Transparent” creator Jill Soloway hired a largely female crew for her Amazon series “I Love Dick.” Ava DuVernay has hired only female directors for her Oprah Winfrey Network show “Queen Sugar.”

Director-actress Zoe Lister-Jones famously hired an all-female crew for her 2017 independent comedy “Band-Aid.” Nicole Kidman last year pledged to work with a female director every 18 months.

Emmy-winning show-runner Ryan Murphy, who as a gay commercial director in the 1990s was himself a minority, launched the Half foundation in 2016 to mentor emerging women and minority directors. Subsequently 60 percent of the directors he has hired for his production company are now women.

It’s not complicated. Women do most of the buying, so why not trust them to lead the ad campaigns too? And produce them. Oh, and while we’re at it, maybe even handle the media planning.

It will undoubtedly contribute to equalizing a system that’s been unfair for way too long and ultimately result in a more receptive consumer and a more trusted brand.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association earned $1.06 billion in revenue last year, eclipsing the $1 billion mark for the first time as the governing body defends its business model in court.

It’s a 6.6 percent jump from fiscal 2016, in which the Indianapolis-based organization made $996 million, according to audited statements released Wednesday. The NCAA turned a $105 million profit.

The milestone comes as the NCAA faces unprecedented scrutiny over its business model, in which some university athletic departments make more than $100 million annually while student-athletes are compensated solely with scholarships. The NCAA is defending that structure in court while the Department of Justice is in the middle of a multiyear investigation into bribery in college basketball recruiting, an underground economy that critics contend wouldn’t be necessary if students were appropriately compensated. NCAA President Mark Emmert has said “systemic changes” are needed to overhaul the system.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Pokemon Go made history in 2016 when it amassed $500 million faster than any other gaming app to date. It then broke yet another record by climbing to $1 billion in revenue in just six months. Although its popularity has died down a bit since, the game is still raking in a profit of between…

Dentsu Aegis Network’s mcgarrybowen announced today that Patrick Lafferty, a 25-year industry vet, as its new U.S. president, replacing Simon Pearce who left to join J. Walter Thompson as CEO of North America earlier this year. Lafferty comes from indie agency Translation, where he served as president for about a year. He will assume the…

While some agencies like CP+B have recently eliminated the chief creative officer title, Oakland-based indie agency EVB—formerly known as Evolution Bureau—named its first-ever this week.

John Reid comes to the shop after spending three years with RS+Partners, a San Francisco venture described as “a new agency model built to do great work in the post-AOR era.” That business, where Reid served as ECD and co-founder, very recently closed.

In the new role, he will relocate to Oakland to lead EVB’s efforts on the creative and new business fronts.

“John has brought his impressive creative talents to a vast array of brands in a wide variety of industries, and we feel incredibly lucky to have him join the EVB team,” said CEO Daniel Stein. “We look forward to weaving John’s creativity, experience and leadership across every aspect of our agency activities.”

Prior to launching RS+Partners, Reid wrote copy for several agencies, eventually holding the ACD, CD and ECD titles at CP+B, BSSP and Isobar, respectively. He has led or contributed to campaigns for such clients as Yelp, Google, Apple, Burger King and Domino’s, and his work has also earned awards at the major shows including Cannes and The One Show.

EVB has been through some leadership changes over the past two-plus years, most prominently losing former creative lead Steve Babcock (along with the Noosa yogurt account) to VaynerMedia back in 2015. Perhaps appropriately, Babcock was also Vayner’s first CCO.

Troy Burrows later took over as ECD in the agency’s Boulder, Colorado office as EVB aimed to build that operation out, but that location shrank and eventually closed at some point over the past year.

EVB has recently produced work for clients like A&E, Office Depot, Juicy Fruit and Burger King … but NOT Netflix, which CEO Stein accused of ripping off his team’s pitch for the 2016 “binge candle” Gilmore Girls campaign.

From virtual slam dunks to interactive mobile games, Under Armour is finding its groove on Snapchat. Within the roster of brands continually testing new creative and ad formats, Under Armour is trying to rise to the top, and it’s using the social platform as its springboard. The strategy makes sense, as there’s a seemingly rational…

Facebook removed a campaign video filmed by a senior Hungarian minister in Vienna, in which he tried to portray “white” Austrians as living in fear of Muslim immigrants in a warning to the Hungarian electorate preparing for elections next month.

Facebook removed the video on Wednesday, saying it violated its principles forbidding comments that attack people based on their racial, ethnic or religious identity. The video was part of an escalating anti-immigrant campaign by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party ahead of parliamentary elections on April 8.

While Fidesz has been in the lead after an all-out media offensive extolling its efforts to defend Europe’s “Christian heritage,” it suffered a painful by-election defeat in one of its rural strongholds last month. That setback appeared to further sharpen its attacks on what it portrays as Hungary’s main foes: immigrants, financier George Soros and recently also the United Nations.

Continue reading at AdAge.com