Hasta La Creative!

For the past week, much of the conversation in the agency world has revolved around The Martin Agency and its now-former chief creative officer, Joe Alexander.

You probably read yesterday’s Adweek story regarding the many allegations made against Alexander by women who spoke to us both on and off the record.

The industry at large has yet to fully process the series of events that led us to where we are today, but several Martin alumni tell us they are attempting to move forward.

Some moves have already been taken. Today, a spokesperson for the 4A’s said that the organization will be removing Alexander from the “100 People Who Make Advertising Great” list released this summer to celebrate its 100th anniversary.

“I can confirm that the 4A’s will be rescinding the 100 People Who Make Advertising Great honor,” the representative said. “We support agencies that take action to create safe and respectful environments for all employees.”

The VCU Brandcenter, which has long been closely tied to the agency and Alexander himself, also responded.

“My heart breaks for The Martin Agency,” said a spokesperson. “They are our family and have supported the school since day one in countless ways. I don’t know any details related to this situation but what I do know is that if there’s any agency who can take this tragedy, learn from it, and emerge better and stronger, it’s Martin.”

Yesterday, the agency’s leadership released an end of day all-staff memo which it then forwarded to the two major advertising trade publications as well as the hometown Richmond Times-Dispatch. Despite the agency’s clear indication that Alexander was fired over sexual harassment claims—particularly those brought by one unnamed employee earlier this month—he continues to insist that he resigned of his own free will and that he has done nothing wrong.

But how do current employees feel?

Kelsey Johnson, an account supervisor who has spent nearly two years with the agency, summed up her thoughts on the events of the past week in a Medium post titled #NotMyMartin that several former staff members have shared with us today.

The post, in full:

It has been a rough week, Martin.

Most of the people I talked to yesterday said they felt sick.

Sick because we are surprised at what we read, or not at all surprised, but seeing it all in print makes it something we can’t ignore anymore.

Or, for the women who didn’t ignore it, feeling the sickness of seeing what happened laid out in front of you. The experiences that shaped you, the ones you spend sleepless nights thinking about. The time you spent agonizing over what you would say and if you would say it. Countless hours of pain and stress, all laid out in a few words on a page. The sum of your pain is a sentence in an article.

And it’s good. But it still hurts. And it feels unfinished.

We need to finish it. And to finish it we have to recognize two things.

1. That we do not condone the behavior of Joe Alexander, or any of his enablers, or those who sexually harass, speak down to and demean women.
2. That we do not condone the environment and the culture that allowed him to feel safe and comfortable in his behavior. The environment that allowed him to stay here and prey on women for over twenty years.

That last one is hard. Because we take our culture so seriously. It is so much a part of who we are and why we love working here.

Culture is supposed to be the real difference between any agency.

And we are proud of ours. When I started here I thought we lived it more than other places I had worked.

So it’s hard to face the reality that there is not just one person at fault here, but a system that enabled that person.

But we have to face it.

In order to break that system, we have to acknowledge that it’s bigger than just letting one person go. It’s not just something we can just fix with training, while that is a start.

It’s something we have to recognize. When we see it, we have to speak up. If we’re brushed off, we cannot give up. The only way to change this culture is if men and women refuse to accept a system that allows for predatory behavior.

If we refuse to accept and condone a system where women are treated like objects. Where women are viewed in a binary way: as either fun plaything to have at work, the target of flirtation and fantasy; or viewed as not worthy of sexual objectification and thus demeaned, not listened to, and pushed to the side.

Neither is right.

You know it when you see it. And I’m sure after training, there will be no excuse.

No excuse to not speak up directly in a meeting when you see something happening. Not to pull someone aside and ask them to stop. Not to put a stop to the boy’s club talks, even when there are no women present. Because that mindset, and those words, spill out of those clubs and affect behavior towards women.

If you see something, say something.

We can do it. Many here have been optimistic, even in the face of this, and I’m starting to feel it too. I’ve been conflicted, but this group has made me optimistic.

Optimistic enough to encourage us all to not crumble under this weight, but to persevere. To recognize this is not the Martin we want, and change it to be the place we all love and feel safe to work in.

We owe it to ourselves.

One of my favorite shows this year was The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s based on a book written by Margaret Atwood about a dystopian society in which women are treated as second class citizens. Valued either for breeding or for servitude.

In it, Atwood explores not only misogyny, but also the relationships between women, and the relationships between like-minded men and women. How they can build each other up, encourage each other, even in the most terrible circumstances.

In that story, the main character, Offred, is beaten down and depressed, but she faces a choice: continue in her life of servitude, trying to survive, or join a resistance of these women and men.

As she’s debating this, there’s a scene that shows her beaten and starved, laying on her side in her closet. And as she lays there she sees something scratched into the wood by her predecessor.

It’s Latin. What Atwood uses in her book is known as a Latin joke, words that are not grammatically correct. It says: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

Which roughly translates to: “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

It has served as a feminist rallying cry. Words to remind us all that we can’t let the behavior of others stop us from progressing, from fighting every day for the world or the culture we want. One that respects women.

Saying it always makes me feel powerful and hopeful. It helps me remember that there are others out there who feel the same way and will take action.

We can do this.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, Martin.

If you have more information about this story, please contact me: patrick.coffee@adweek.com

[pic via]

KBS is not participating in BMW’s U.S. creative review, Adweek reported yesterday.

BMW announced the procurement-driven review, which coincides with the end of the brand’s contract with KBS, in October. The review process is being handled by search consultancy Roth Ryan Hayes. Sources told Adweek at the time of the review’s launch that BMW was seeking a two-agency partnership, similar to the strategy it employed by concluding the review of its Mini brand by selecting Pereira & O’Dell and 360i as its agency partners. The review is expected to conclude in February or March.

KBS has handled BMW’s creative in the U.S. for over ten years and retained the account following a 2011 review which included Grey and The Martin Agency. Last year, BMW sent web design responsibilities to Critical Mass but retained KBS as its lead agency.

KBS CEO Guy Hayward told staff that KBS would not be participating in the review in an email yesterday. Here it is in full:

Dear Everyone,

As I shared at a recent “Bluechairs” meeting, the BMW pitch has kicked off. Today, after much discussion, I’m writing to share with you that we have decided to not take part in the review.

We’re extremely proud of the work that we’ve done with BMW during our 12-year relationship. On our watch, BMW was the bestselling luxury automotive brand for three years in a row on half the spend of the competitors, our Super Bowl spot in 2015 was one of the most popular of all time, we have also pioneered the first global car launch predominantly on mobile. Time and again our work on the website or in communications has been acknowledged by the Effies, the automotive industry, JD Power and the Cannes Lions. We have a great story to tell of our modernizing impact on this brand. Thank you to everybody who has worked on and will continue to work on this great brand.

We are engaged with BMW until the end of June 2018 and will continue to do our best for BMW. We are also committed to assisting BMW with the transition of the business to the new agency to be announced.

We all know this news brings change. It will also bring opportunity. Given that we have won two significant pieces of new business over the last six weeks, we are in a very strong position moving forward.

I understand you may have questions. We will schedule one-on-one conversations with everybody currently working on BMW so that we can discuss what it means for each person on the account. If you are not on BMW, but would like to discuss what this means for you, please reach out to your Department Head.

Thank you.

Guy

When Jen Stack, Director of Communications at Colle McVoy, sends me something, I pay attention. I pay attention because Colle McVoy in Minneapolis sends the best branded merchandise, a.k.a. gifts, of anyone in the business. Whether it’s a packet of notecards, chocolates, or a new planner for 2018, it’s always well-made, thoughtful and useful. Because […]

The post Colle McVoy Takes “Minnesota Nice” To Another Level appeared first on Adpulp.

What starts in Miami doesn’t necessarily stay in Miami. That’s the story out of Miami, where creative powerhouse Crispin Porter & Bogusky was born 35 years ago. According to The Drum and other media outlets, CP+B/Miami is closing its doors. The announcement affects 75 employees in total, mostly in finance and accounting. Those functions will […]

The post Miami Is for Dolphins and Cuban Coffee, Not Ad Agencies of Record appeared first on Adpulp.

Arnold Worldwide has gone through a series of layoffs this month which appear to have impacted the agency’s Boston and New York offices.

“We can confirm recent staff adjustments. These changes are necessary to adapt and align our business with the ever-changing market landscape, as many others in our industry are doing,” an agency spokesperson said. “We continue to prioritize being the best partner to the Modern CMO and are invested in our staff moving forward.”

The representative declined to elaborate on the scale or timing of those adjustments or confirm that they applied to both offices. But according to multiple parties who reached out to us, an unspecified number of employees were terminated earlier this month in New York and another wave of layoffs was announced today.

Arnold’s staffing changes follow several recent account losses including Hershey and Carnival. The cruise line announced its plans to part ways with Arnold in May, launching a review that concluded with the selection of Anomaly as its creative agency of record in August. The review also included a digital component, and the winner of that portion of the business has yet to be announced. Hershey also announced in August that it was consolidating its creative work with MDC Partners. The Carnival contract recently ended, and Hershey will wrap up on January 1, 2018.

Multiple parties have also told us that Arnold will no longer work with Angie’s List, which signed with the agency last January as part of a brand refresh effort. Today a company representative said, “we are still evaluating our 2018 ad strategy and agency relationships.”

The future of the agency’s relationship with another client, KAO, seems unclear.

“Arnold and KAO have enjoyed a successful partnership since April 2014, working together on the John Frieda, Jergens and Curél brands. Since that time, the world of marketing has continued to evolve at rapid speed and we’ve decided to be more agile in our agency partnerships,” KAO senior vice president, regional executive officer, Americas and EMEA mass business Dave Muenz, Sr. said in a statement. “We have and may continue to partner with Arnold on a project basis.”

The agency spokesperson declined to comment on these accounts.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky announced plans to close its Miami office in March as part of an effort to consolidate its U.S. operations, Adweek reports.

“It’s something we’ve been talking about for a while,” CP+B founder and chairman Chuck Porter said, adding that while “agonizing,” it was “the best thing for the agency and the work. We’re done restructuring now.”

“Obviously, it was partly a financial decision. A lot of clients we had here came from our connections in Brazil,” he added.

CP+B launched with Miami as its headquarters back in 1988, subsequently opening offices in Los Angeles and Boulder in 2001 and 2006. The agency’s accounts run out of Miami will now move to its Boulder, Los Angeles and São Paulo offices.

The announcement follows CP+B’s decision to shrink the size of its Los Angeles office earlier this month, after laying off five percent of its staff this summer in the wake of Infiniti moving global creative duties to 72andSunny without a review. CP+B L.A. retains the U.S. agency of record duties for the car brand.

Around 75 staff members will be affected by this news. Porter told us that most employees in Miami are “support people” handling bookkeeping and business affairs work but said that a majority of client-facing staff, “particularly creatives” like ECD Tom Adams, will be moving to L.A. CP+B is working with the larger MDC Partners network to find opportunities for other employees, though Porter acknowledges that many will not be able to leave Miami.

One user of the Fishbowl app described the move as a “trail of tears.”

Any employees unable to find work at MDC might be able to score a gig at the new agency that David veterans Anselmo Ramos and Gaston Bigio plan to launch in March.

Those guys didn’t want to tell us which clients will help fund their new operation. Who wants to guess??

Omnicom-owned digital agency Organic has opened a new office in Los Angeles and picked up Frank Dattalo from R/GA to serve as its executive creative director.

“I joined Organic because of the people and their mentality. Creativity is experiencing real transformation and only the most resilient agencies are reflecting this cultural shift in their work,” Dattalo said in a statement. “I’m grateful to be part of this incredible team that looks to the future to collaborate at the center of where content is king.”

Dattalo has served as creative director on Nike for R/GA since August of 2016. Before joining R/GA he spent two years as a creative for Apple, following two years as senior vice president, group creative director for Deutsch L.A. Prior to joining Deutsch he spent over a decade with EnergyBBDO, serving as vice president, creative director and then senior vice president, group creative director.

Back in May, Organic brought on Michelle Tang as its new chief growth officer. The agency currently has offices in New York, San Francisco, Detroit, Atlanta and Bogotá, Colombia, in addition to Los Angeles, and works with clients including AT&T, Quaker, Kohler and Kotex.

It’s now been four days since the Cannes Lions makeover, and agencies around the world are still asking, what does this mean for meeeeee???

The answers are starting to come in. For FCB, it means stricter guidelines on who will go to Cannes next year.

FCB worldwide CEO Carter Murray sent out the following memo to all FCB staff yesterday.

FCB executives didn’t elaborate on the note. But one industry veteran speaking on background stated that this would not be a dramatic departure from the makeup of past Cannes teams and that the employees who opt out of the festival this year will probably be executives.

A couple of points to note: Murray’s memo seems to imply that the FCB organization doesn’t think these changes went far enough but doesn’t get specific. One source called the changes “confusing” and predicted that next summer’s Cannes parties won’t be quite crazy as those in past years. Of course, the Gutter Bar will still be open.

It’s also notable that WPP and Sir Martin Sorrell, who seemed to be driving the conversation about Cannes in the first place, have not said anything about the announcements. This despite the fact that, according to an email chain published by Adweek in September, the holding company was not particularly happy with Cannes parent company Ascential.

But then Publicis Groupe seems satisfied, so all is good with the world.

Today JWT London announced that it has launched a full consultancy service helping brands connect with women. This is problematic for a few reasons, at least one of which is obvious.

18 months ago, the JWT team led by group planning head Rachel Pashley released a thesis based on the “Female Tribes” project, which interviewed several thousand women aged 18-70 to develop a “Women’s Index Study.”

The problems start to emerge when considering the group’s findings: most participants said there’s “never been a better time to be a woman,” that they feel empowered by their careers and that femininity is seen as a positive rather than a negative.

Keep in mind that this is all in a workplace context and ask yourself whether the same might apply to the company conducting this study.

Here’s how Pashley described the new offering to Fast Company:

Since we launched, clients have come to us asking for our insights and advice. We haven’t had to seek them out. And much of the work we were doing was moving upstream into business design and insight, so it made sense formalize this into a full consultancy offering.

Do you look at women through blunt demographics or attitudes and aspirations?

We should say that the research behind this effort is real and that the project started before news of Erin Johnson’s lawsuit against the agency went public.

That said, many women both within and beyond the ad business have taken a very clear message from the legal teams representing JWT, its parent company and its former CEO: tread very carefully. In the meantime, Gustavo Martinez is talking about his boss Sir Martin in Spain while he works on “re-creating the company itself.”

Today Digiday ran a story about why women don’t report harassment at agencies that included the following line: “Almost everyone Digiday spoke to for this story brought up the Gustavo Martinez case as one reason they won’t put their names to their experiences.”

We have heard the same thing from multiple people. And why wouldn’t they come to that conclusion?

A few current and former JWT employees have expressed their anger about the way the Johnson case has been handled. And many can’t say anything publicly because they signed NDAs.

The primary issue, though, is that the company now claims to help marketers reach women around the world more directly while female professionals within its own industry name it as the primary example of why they hesitate to speak up on sexual harassment issues.

At this point it doesn’t really matter whether that was intentional or not. It is certainly not a great look for a business selling its ability to speak for professional women as consumers.

Ad agencies are maybe possibly sometimes a little ridiculous. But you clicked on this blog, so you didn’t need us to tell you that.

Take it from the anonymous “young” person who spoke to Digiday about the culture at his/her agency for a post today:

We play nice, but we’re in a catty environment. Nobody wants to help each other. As an industry, we’re always at each other’s throats, or at least at each other’s collarbones. There is a culture of gossip that’s hurtful. Agency people are incestuous. The gossip follows people around. There are people who go to eight agencies in five years and come out with negative stories. People are real assholes.

Well that one hit close to home. Thankfully, there is a whole subset of agencies that take the time to produce pieces specifically making fun of their own business beyond all those Ad Council shorts. One of them is Portal A. The L.A. and S.F. digital studio does work for real clients, most notably its annual YouTube “Rewind” series, but in our minds it is still best known for its spoof of the Dove Real Beauty campaign from four years ago.

The latest in its Ad Hoc series (which started with the Dove video) is a self-explanatory collaboration with our friends at Adweak titled “Genius at Work: Inside the World of Modern Advertising.”
“We work with brands all the time, but AdHoc has been our chance to take a step back and have some fun with the absurdity of the ad industry,” said Portal A co-founder and executive producer Nate Houghteling. “AdWeak was the perfect match for us because they’re doing the same thing but with a different angle. Luckily for both of us, there’s plenty of nonsense to go around.”

See, they only poke fun because they’ve been through it themselves.

The Adweak team’s deep cynicism comes from years in the trenches, and we have little doubt that the good people at Portal A have spent more than one afternoon trying to come up with a good hashtag for a soap brand … or a hotel chain, or a tablet, or a bunch of little emoji-like things that Twitter used to make its service more exciting to people who aren’t 45-year-old journalists obsessing over the latest White House press conference.

For more of the same, Canada’s Strategy calls on the top agencies north of the border each year to create their own parodies of the ad business. Here’s BBDO on adding shits to your sheets.

One thing we would like to ask some of these unnamed spoof specialist agencies: why don’t you share your client work? Like, the stuff that pays your bills. Are you embarrassed by your day jobs, or what?