Hasta La Creative!

Publicis announced this morning that Saatchi & Saatchi executive chairman and Publicis Groupe head coach Kevin Roberts will resign as of September 1 — ahead of his previously scheduled May 1, 2017 retirement.

Roberts had been placed on a leave of absence following a Business Insider interview in which he made controversial comments regarding gender diversity issues. He told Lara O’Reilly saying “The fucking debate is all over” and he sees no need to spend “any time” worrying about gender diversity at his agencies. He also dismissed those who spend time campaigning over the issue, taking aim at Cindy Gallop specifically as having “problems that are of her own making.”

The press release from Publicis read simply:

“Publicis Groupe announced today the resignation of Kevin Roberts Head Coach de Publicis Groupe, Executive Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi/Fallon, Member of the Management Board. The Supervisory Board and the Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe took note of Kevin Robert’s decision to step down with effect from September 1st 2016, prior to his retirement date due in May 2017.”

Roberts’ PR firm released his own statement to media in which he apologized for the “upset and offence” caused by his “miscommunication on a number of points.” Here’s the statement in full: 

“Fail Fast, Fix Fast, Learn Fast” is a leadership maxim I advocate.

When discussing with Business Insider evolving career priorities and new ways of work/life integration, I failed exceptionally fast.

My miscommunication on a number of points has caused upset and offence, and for this I am sorry.
I have inadvertently embarrassed Saatchi & Saatchi and Publicis Groupe, two companies I love and have been devoted to for almost 20 years.

I have expressed my regret and apology to the companies for the furor my remarks and language stimulated, and I extend this to colleagues, staff and clients.

So that we can all move forward, I am bringing forward my May 1, 2017, retirement from the company, and will leave the Groupe onSeptember 1, 2016.

There is a lot of learning to reflect on, and within the thousands of tweets, comments and articles there are many powerful and passionate contributions on the changing nature of the workplace, the work we do, what success really looks like, and what companies must do to provide women and men the optimal frameworks in which to flourish.

I believe that new thinking, frameworks and measures are needed to make more rapid progress on diversity in all its forms, in all professions and occupations. Hopefully, the focus on this serious and complex issue will gather momentum.

Cindy Gallop, who Roberts mentioned directly, released her own statement to Business Insider in response to the news of Roberts’ resignation. She claims Publicis could have made a greater statement to the women it employs if it had fired Roberts but says she anticipates greater change moving forward.

Gallop’s statement in full:

I’m pleased to see that Kevin Roberts has resigned, given that his comments made him non-credible as a chairman charged with inspiring, motivating and promoting into leadership the thousands of women who work for Saatchi and Saatchi Worldwide; as a coach charged with training and developing the industry leaders of the future; and a leader whom huge clients selling brands. products and services to millions of women trust with their own brand reputation, communication and sales.

However, given he was forced to resign, PublicisGroupe would have made a far greater statement to every woman working within their network, at every client brand they represent, and to the industry as a whole, if they had fired him.

I look forward to Maurice Levy and Publicis Groupe now spearheading a very dramatic seachange in the way the white male leadership of our industry welcomes women and people of color up to the leadership ranks shoulder to shoulder with them, and to seeing tangible, visible action on their part in the coming weeks. Starting with Maurice Levy attending and speaking at the 3PercentConference in NYC this Nov 3/4 (where I will also be speaking) – the perfect platform to address the female talent and creativity in our industry and demonstrate how much he values it.

Some context for the interview that led to this imbroglio: O’Reilly declined to speak to us about it directly, but we hear that a PR firm that represents Roberts as a client (but has no relation to the Saatchi or Publicis organizations) set up the meeting when Roberts happened to be in London last month.

This interview was more about promoting Roberts as a thought leader than discussing any of his work or future plans for Saatchi & Saatchi/Publicis Groupe. During the same session, O’Reilly asked him to comment on the current U.S. presidential election; he noted that Donald Trump has a simple and effective slogan and said that Hillary Clinton is “bereft of a selling line … bereft of a dream.”

There do not appear to have been any PR professionals in attendance during the interview. Otherwise someone surely would have told Roberts to either avoid the issue of gender equality altogether or to stop while he was ahead.

It’s not clear at this time whether Saatchi & Saatchi plans to name a successor.

Y&R officially launched its new Memphis office yesterday with a grand opening and ribbon cutting co-sponsored by the Memphis Chamber of Commerce.

Y&R Memphis was created to service the agency’s United States Navy account under The Navy Partnership, which also includes ML, Wunderman, Burson-Marsteller, MEC and Uniworld. Fifty professionals from the area were hired to work on the Navy account. The U.S. Navy named Y&R its lead agency in May of 2015, following a review. 

“We’re thrilled to be the first global advertising agency to have a presence in Memphis,” said Y&R global CEO David Sable in a statement. “Working across our partner agencies and establishing ourselves within close proximity to the Navy’s headquarters will allow us to deliver the full power, resources and marketing expertise of our global network to Memphis and the greater Mid-South region. We’re so excited to finally be here.”

The office will be led by managing director Ken Dowling, who also serves as global client leader on Y&R’s Navy account and will lead business development at Y&R Memphis. Dowling will partner with executive creative director Ryan Blum, who recently joined the agency from Publicis Seattle.

Blum spent around a year and a half as a creative director with Publicis Seattle, following two years as a group creative direcor at TraceyLocke and three as a creative director before that. Prior to joining TraceyLocke in 2010, he spent two years as a copywriter with The Richards Group, after beginning his career by spending six years as a copywriter with TraceyLocke. Over the course of his career he has worked with brands including T-Mobile, Samsung and 7-Eleven.

“This is such a proud day for Y&R,” Dowling said. “We’re extremely excited to officially open our doors in Memphis, a thriving city. With Ryan on board, and with the help of our partner companies, we know we will do great things here as we build on the revitalization already taking place, and hope to become a part of the long-term success of the Memphis community.”

The contentious DNC Convention is in Philadelphia this week, along with the WikiLeaks “DNC Leaks” email controversy and the subsequent ouster of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the booing Sanders delegates and the Paul Simon. So Philly-based Red Tettemer O’Connell + Partners decided to change its name — at least while the noisy convention is generating buzz in the City of Brotherly Love.

The new moniker (Blue Tettemer O’Connell + Partners, naturally) appears on the agency’s website and social channels.

While RTO+P, like many agencies, has its share of Democratic supporters, the move isn’t exactly a political one, according to agency founder Steve Red, who is going by “Steve Blue” this week.

“It’s more of a celebration of Philly, and our town, and the DNC being there,” Red explained to Adweek. “We were in a meeting and were talking about all of the Democrats coming into town, and the craziness that was going to ensue, and someone, out of the blue—no pun intended—said we should change the name of the agency.”

Despite the agency’s name change in honor of the event, Red decided to avoid the chaos and spend the week at RTO+P’s Santa Monica office for the week.

“I’ve heard from the folks back home that it’s pretty nutty, but in a good way,” he said. “We love Philly in so many ways, and it’s a proud moment for us, so we thought we’d join in the fun.”

No word on whether this change is a kind-of-blatant attempt to win media attention.

Following the departure of chief strategy officer Anush Prabhu for MediaCom, Deutsch New York CEO Val DiFebo announced a reorganization of the New York office’s media, communications planning and data teams, which were overseen by Prabhu. The move also follows the recent hiring of Rachel Mercer as vice president, digital strategy director and the arrival of New York chief strategy officer Andrew Dawson in March.

Post-Prabhu, the agency has realigned its data, tech, communications planning and creative teams.

“There has been a natural gravitation and a growing collaboration occurring between our tech and data departments, as well as our creative and comms planning teams,” DiFebo said in a statement. “We have an incredibly strong leadership team already in place who will serve as the key pillars ensuring our continued success. This will optimize our creative and media output.”

Going forward, communications planning will unite with creative. Director of communications planning Matthew George will align more closely with the agency’s creative department, reporting to CCO Dan Kelleher, who arrived at the agency in April. There will also be closer ties between data and tech, as director of data analytics Rich VanSteenburgh will now report to chief technology officer Trevor O’Brien. On the media side, director of integrated media Karen Benson and director of local buying Maureen Burzynski will now report to chief operating officer Erica Grau.

“By bridging the gap between science and art, copy and code, and insight intelligence and emotion intelligence we’ll continue to change the way brands go to market and result in improved bottom lines for our clients,” added DiFebo.

Last year R&R Partners–the agency best known for the “What Happens in Vegas” tagline–picked up a less conventional client: the government of South Sudan.

R&R, which was founded by former Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush advisor/ad man/U.S. ambassador to Iceland Sig Rogich, provides a range of services to its various partners. As noted in this January 2015 post from PR trade blog O’Dwyer’s, the very new country of South Sudan hired the agency to do work related to “development of a message platform, influencer outreach, editorial services, crisis communications, [and] media training.”

The purpose of the one-year, $900,000 deal was to help the world’s youngest democracy better interact with the United States after its democratically elected government (created in 2011 after a U.S.-supported referendum on independence) signed a truce of sorts with a rebel group that had officially waged war against that government since 2013 in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people, most of them civilians.

One more visible aspect of the contract involved running this Twitter account, which last tweeted one year ago.

Resumption of peace talks to take place on July 20th via @SudanTribunehttp://t.co/1aTYPga9xl

— Stand Up South Sudan (@StandUpSSudan) July 13, 2015

R&R’s work for South Sudan has reappeared in the news this month thanks to both an increase in violence and the release of this Center for Public Integrity report questioning whether South Sudan’s agency partners had properly complied with a law requiring U.S. companies to announce their plans to act on behalf of a foreign government. Those partners include R&R along with Podesta Group, which was founded by longtime Democratic Party fundraiser Tony Podesta. (His brother John is currently Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.)

South Sudan ranks second on a respected list of the world’s most fragile states, and violence has increased there in recent months after a period of (very relative) stability, with the United Nations and the African Union now making plans to put more peacekeeping forces in the country. 5 million people in South Sudan are currently in need of humanitarian assistance in the form of food or basic medical supplies.

The controversy central to the Center for Publicity Integrity piece is the fact that the South Sudan government, which now claims to be broke, managed to spend $2.1 million on these agency partners between late 2014 and the end of 2015. It’s fairly standard practice for struggling governments to hire U.S. PR firms that specialize in international diplomacy and crisis communications in order to improve their relationships with the United States, but it’s less common for an ad agency to join the mix.

The piece itself is a long read, but it notes that various congressmen in both major parties have encouraged the federal government to continue or strengthen an ongoing arms embargo, thereby preventing the South Sudanese government from using U.S. aid money to buy weapons. John Kerry and various spokespeople for the current administration claim that the U.S. continues to fully support the government of South Sudan, noting that various sanctions have been in place for several years.

This is the sort of interminable, endlessly complex situation that frustrates even those most experienced in international relations. The CPI report states: “Those advocating a more vigorous stance contend that the lobbying and PR created a misleading narrative that contributes to the current paralysis.”

The issue is debatable, but for this post the point is that R&R chose to work with the government of South Sudan and that the agency now defends the work it did.

“R&R Partners was engaged by the democratically-elected government of the Republic of South Sudan, a new country that pursued its independence under United States guidance,” a spokesperson writes in response to our query about the nature of the now-completed relationship between the two parties.

The statement continues: “We were engaged during the internationally-led peace talks with rebel forces, with the goal of encouraging lasting peace at a time when both sides were working toward that end. We were hopeful that an end to the civil war would come in time to redirect aid to address growing famine and a looming financial crisis, and encouraged policymakers to avoid sanctions as the tenuous peace process progressed. Sadly, we have seen a return to conflict, and the predicted humanitarian disaster. We stand behind our work and our intentions, and continue to hope for peace in the Republic of South Sudan.”

Various parties told the Center for Public Integrity’s Erin Quinn that they see all U.S. entities doing business with the South Sudanese government as “[beneficiaries] of a war situation” and accused them of making “blatantly, patently false” statements regarding the country.

The central purpose of R&R’s work was to minimize the effects of sanctions that might limit the country’s ability to do business with the United States–arms business included. “The firm’s consultants contacted dozens of members of Congress, congressional staff, State Department officials, think tanks and nonprofits to discuss the issues of sanctions and the peace process, disclosures show,” but their efforts ultimately did not succeed as the Obama administration has repeatedly renewed and/or extended those sanctions.

The CPI piece notes that former Colorado governor Bill Owens was among those who worked on the account and that he made $50,000 in doing so. The government also worked with Watts Partners, a lobbying firm founded by former football player and Republican house member J.C. Watts, along with D.C.-based consultancy KRL International.

R&R had the biggest single contract among the aforementioned agencies. The company, which does not list all of its clients on its website, has worked with Los Vegas’ Animal Foundation, data storage giant WD and Boeing in addition to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Creature Seattle, the indie shop named AdAge’s Small Agency of the Year, Northwest in 2014, has closed after filing for bankruptcy six weeks ago. W+K veteran Matt Peterson and Jim Haven of GS&P founded the agency, which lasted 14 years and was for a time the largest agency in the Puget Sound area, reporting $32 million in revenue for 2013.

One week ago, Seattle’s Puget Sound Business Journal published an exclusive regarding the bankruptcy filing, which happened on May 31st after Creature partner Time, Inc. sued the agency over unpaid bills for ads placed within its properties. The filing was an attempt to let the organization reorganize while preparing to pay its various debts.

In the initial filing, Peterson and Haven listed their company’s assets as $500,000 to $1 million and its total liabilities as $2.6 million. Its creditors include AOL Advertising, Clear Channel, A&E, ESPN, NBC, iHeartMedia and Vox Media (among others), with individual unsecured claims ranging from $42,000 to $283,000.

The agency, which still had active contracts with clients including Amazon, Apple, and others at the time of the initial filing, got sued on May 6th. On that date, lawyers for Time, Inc. alleged that the company had failed to pay more than $110,000 after placing an ad campaign. According to the Puget Sound Business Journal article, Haven also recently left Creature to join Heyou Media, a content production company started by Tom Skerritt (and yes, he is the actor you remember from Alien, Top Gun and Picket Fences). That firm’s homepage currently lists Haven as co-founder and chief promotional officer. Nick Gesualdi, who served as director of client management and new business at Creature, also left to join Amazon as a senior campaign manager this month.

It’s unclear at this time exactly why the agency had been unable to pay so many of its bills. Creature’s lawyers and those of its creditors have made various filings related to the case throughout June and July, many of which concerned payment deadlines and the use of cash collateral. The most recent, which was filed yesterday, concerned Creature client Ricoh’s request to be added to “the official mailing matrix and service lists in this case.”

We last heard about Creature in February, when Dickie’s ended its relationship with the agency after four years. We also posted more than a year ago about the departure of former Creature CEO and Seattle-area politician James Keblas, who left after approximately one year to launch City Inspired, which appears to be a public policy consultancy.

Tipsters claimed earlier this week that Creature will officially go out of business on August 1, but a Google search tells us the shop is already “permanently closed.” We did not receive a response to email queries this week, and our phone calls went directly to an automated “To speak to a representative, press 0” recording.

Creature opened a London office in 2011. That operation has been a separate company since 2013, and it was not affected by this development. Managing partner/co-founder Dan Shute writes, “Jim & Matt are brilliant folk, and we wish them all the best with their next endeavour, but we’re two businesses that share a name, and nothing more–and have been for a number of years now.”

The U.K. Creature currently employs more than 50 people and works with such clients as Adidas, Uber and Truvia.

It’s unclear at this time how many jobs have been lost in Seattle. Creature’s LinkedIn page claims 50-200 employees, but based on past news about the shop we believe the number of affected staffers to be significantly lower.

Wieden+Kennedy’s decision to replace its homepage with a statement on the #BlackLivesMatter movement last week has earned attention and/or praise from quite a few observers and media outlets including our parent company, AdAge and even the Washington Post. This despite the fact that the agency never promoted or discussed it directly.

The message, which started as an internal email written by a black employee, remains on the site as of this post after Hill Holliday removed a similar statement from its home page.

One observer, however, is not quite as impressed.

Brandon Burns is a copywriter and experience designer who has worked for Leo Burnett, MRM//McCann, Proximity BBDO and, for the past year, Wieden+Kennedy Portland.

Today he published a must-read Medium story in which he simultaneously praises W+K’s move and claims that every single agency he worked for previously “engaged in actions that broke the federal laws prohibiting discrimination in the workplace.”

What does that mean?

“…while my personal career has been net-positive, along the way I have lost jobs to objectively less qualified candidates, I have fought, and won, a case of racial-based wage depression, and I’ve even had to report a manager to HR for harassment, only to be fired by the accused 24 hours later.”

Burns then asks a big question: will W+K’s tacit support of #BlackLivesMatter change the fact that the vast majority of its leaders, creative and otherwise, happen to be both white and male?

Those looking for a straight-up takedown will be disappointed. Burns acknowledges the agency’s own efforts to address this discrepancy, writing:

“As a hiring manager, I worked very closely with the in-house recruiting team; I am well aware of their valiant efforts to find new talent of all races and genders. Yet, nevertheless, when they share the portfolios of the best candidates with the Creative Directors?—?93% of whom are white males?—?it is, time and again, the white male candidates who are pursued and hired.”

Burns very clearly states that no one at W+K has exhibited racist tendencies to his knowledge. But he also names humanity’s inherent tribal sensibilities as the reason for the ad industry’s overwhelming whiteness, writing, “The creative director always has a reason why he hired, promoted or gave preferential treatment to someone who happens to look like him.”

He goes on to suggest several ways in which any given agency might move from sentiment to action on the diversity front, listing blind portfolio reviews, regular standardized performance reviews, and universal metrics for raises and promotions. His main idea is that agencies define “success” more objectively in order to avoid the sort of (often unconscious) traits that lead white men to hire and promote other white men.

Burns’ post may be the best-written take on the diversity issue that we’ve read, at least in recent weeks. It ends by encouraging white people to simply try and understand minority perspectives rather than reverting to “Wait, you think I’m a racist?!”

A W+K spokesperson has not gotten back to us about the story, just as the agency declined to comment on the site itself.

(Image via LinkedIn)

Last week, Hill Holliday became the second agency (after Wieden + Kennedy) to replace its web presence with a statement addressing the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

The agency’s homepage currently includes only an embedded Spotify playlist and the following statement with link:

If there were ever a time when humanity was in need of love, it’s now.

We don’t just want to take yet another moment of silence.

Instead, let’s hear each other out and become a part of the solution.

#BlackLivesMatter

AdAge initially reported on Wieden+Kennedy’s move with this Wednesday story, and Hill Holliday apparently made the change on Thursday evening at the end of the business day.

If there were ever a time when humanity was in need of love, it’s now. #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/i14RzrRugb

— Hill Holliday (@hillholliday) July 8, 2016

The Spotify playlist is somewhat in keeping with the “humanity’s in need of love” sentiment, including such classic tributes of the genre as The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s In Need of Love Today” and Lenny Kravitz’s “Let Love Rule.” It also includes a few more openly discordant choices like Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright,” Bob Marley’s “Get Up Stand Up” and and Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.”

An agency spokesperson said today that Hill Holliday doesn’t plan to comment on the decision.

In case you weren’t already aware, Wieden + Kennedy has been receiving a fair amount of attention over the past 20-plus hours for turning its website into a note on the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the events of the past week (excluding the horrific shooting spree that killed 5 police officers last night in Dallas).

Around the end of the work day yesterday, W+K’s homepage went down to be replaced by this:

It’s a fairly self-explanatory note in some ways, but the backstory helps put it in the proper perspective.

No one at W+K has spoken directly to us or other publications about the site, and an agency representative declined to comment today.

But sources with direct knowledge of the matter tell us that the change started with an internal email written by a black W+K employee that consisted of the same message seen above. It went out on Wednesday, the morning after the death of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Again, this was all before the death of Philando Castile and the shooting in Dallas last night.)

We obviously can’t assign any motivations to the person who wrote that email, but it reads like an attempt to convey his/her emotional state to co-workers.

Over the next day, agency leaders discussed this note and decided collectively to place it on the agency’s homepage; at the moment, viewers cannot access any other pages via wk.com. As we understand it, the decision stemmed from a desire to show support for W+K employees internally while also demonstrating to at least a few outsiders that the movement is much more than a hashtag and that it stems from a very real and very raw emotional response to events that feel like they are beyond any given individual’s control.

Some former employees seem to appreciate the gesture.

appreciate this statement from the most diverse, welcoming place i’ve ever worked at. by far. https://t.co/PWbSLeEFym

— yung content ? (@lukashmayyn) July 8, 2016

Of course we have no idea how effective the site will be in that respect, but we see it as a summary of the agency’s own current status. In that way, W+K is so far unique in the ad industry.

We’ve all heard of specialty agencies. There are also some cases like Cavalry, which for a time only made ads promoting various MillerCoors alcoholic beverage brands.

But an agency that only creates work related to marijuana legalization? That’s completely new to us.

Yesterday LBB Online ran a Q&A with Howard Bowler, founder of New York’s Green Point Creative. Bowler is an industry veteran. He spent more than a decade with Grey, where he was an audio engineer and ultimately managed the shop’s post department (according to his LinkedIn profile). After leaving the network to start an audio production company, he appropriately launched a shop dedicated to this one very specific issue on April 20th of this year. But why? Let’s aggregate a bit.

Here’s what he told LBB:

“Green Point is a creative content agency currently tackling the problems of harsh drug policy facing the United States today.

A family member was arrested last year on a possession charge even though he physically had no marijuana on him at the time. Throughout the whole overly complicated legal process I began to do some research on my own and discovered that not only is the War on Drugs a fraud, it is a war against minorities and the poor. Nothing more, nothing less.”

The agency’s site opens with a quote from Richard Nixon’s counsel John Ehrlichman stating that the administration’s War on Drugs was “really all about” punishing two opposition groups: “the antiwar left and black people.” He added, “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Here’s the agency’s PSA, released last month, that plays on Nixon’s announcement.

Bowler then tells LBB that his new content agency is an offshoot of the audio company: “If you look at ad agency models, they tend to build in house production units for their creative. We started from the other direction as an audio post company and now expanding into creative content. It’s a very fluid and exciting time.”

Indeed. The agency’s site doesn’t list any clients, which is not surprising given that marijuana use in New York state still falls into a very grey area, especially if it has no official medical purpose.

This is similar to a PR firm/nonprofit advocacy organization we profiled a couple of years ago that was created to serve one type of client: those whose business involves marijuana in some way. The idea was to “prepare corporations” for the inevitable market in which they can openly cater to stoners.

We’re not sure exactly how that went, but Bowler tells LBB that his agency has already moved from radio spots to long-form video ads and “informative new media content,” adding: “The main goal is to continue de-stigmatising marijuana. Shedding that stoner image has always been a huge goal for us.”

Here’s the first PSA, which went live on June 9th.

Legalization is coming to your state if it hasn’t already. But we wonder whether this sort of project will become a trend as well.