Hasta La Creative!

General Mills made headlines this week by revealing on Tuesday that it has specific diversity requirements for the agencies competing in its creative review, requiring the creative departments of its future agency partners to include 50 percent women and 20 percent people of color.

Today we’ve learned that HP CEO Antonio Lucio sent out a letter to current agency partners with a similar call to action regarding diversity on August 30. After making an effort to foster diversity internally, with a specific eye toward closing the gender gap with female hires, HP is now asking the same of its agency partners. Among the recipients of the letter were BBDO, FleishmanHillard, Gyro, Fred&Farid and Porter Novelli.

“Diversity gives HP a competitive advantage. It helps drive new business, fuel innovation, and attract and attain the best employees,” an HP representative said in a statement offered to AgencySpy. “This letter is a call to action. Now that we have built our business case and begun to put our own house in order, we are relying on our agency partners to do the same; we are expecting these marketing and communications leaders to actively embrace diversity and actually do something about it.”

HP is expecting its agency partners to act fast on plans to increase diversity. “We have called upon each of our agency partners’ CEOs to develop a plan that significantly increases the representation of women and people of color in top creative and strategic roles,” the representative added. “Without exception the responses we have received are of true enthusiasm and commitment. Our agency partners now have 30 days to deliver their plans and 12 months to make good on those plans – and we intend to monitor each firm’s performance along the way.”

While the letter makes reference to a “a scorecard that will track multiple levels of diversity,” which HP has implemented for its own efforts and now expects to be adopted by its agency partners, it’s unclear if HP has specific diversity quotas for its agencies, as with General Mills’ demands in its creative review, or if it is working with its agency partners to determine the best way to reach its ultimate diversity goals. It’s also unclear if HP is echoing General Mills’ targeting of creative departments in particular. But it is clear that the company has set out a very specific timeline for agencies to set up and implement plans for increased diversity.

We’ve included the letter in full below:

A Challenge to Agency Leadership

August 30

Dear Friends,

Earlier this month I spoke with you — the CEOs of all of HP’s advertising and marketing agency partners — to ask

that we all join in making an important commitment to radically improve the percentage of women and people of

color in leadership roles in our organizations. I’m delighted that without exception you gave your enthusiastic

support for this pledge.

 

How successful we are will define our legacies. So, as you set your goals and make your plans, I ask you to keep

these points in mind:

 

At HP, our vision is to make technology that makes the world a better place for everyone, everywhere. But we

recognize that we can’t realize our vision if our business leaders don’t represent everyone, in color, gender, and

geography. We take great pride that HP has the most diverse board of directors in the technology industry, and

that we make diversity an explicit business goal. Yet I know we can do even more. I know we must do more.

Including women and people of color in key roles is not only a values issue, but a significant business imperative.

HP thrives on innovation. Study after study confirms that innovation is improved and accelerated by broad

perspectives and diversity of thought. Marketers are expected to have deep understanding and insight about their

markets, about decision makers, and about customers.

 

We are more likely to create solutions that amaze our customers if our workforce represents the communities we

serve. As a global company, we need to take a broad view of diversity as increased representation will take

different forms in different countries. We have decided to start by addressing women.

 

We make printers and personal computers. Who buys them? Women: 53 percent for computers, 45 percent for

printers. We are focused on ensuring that our marketing department has the right talent composition to capture

our business opportunities. Over the last 12 months we have invested in programs designed to ensure that at

least half of our top marketing jobs are held by women. It is important to understand that these were not random

moves to increase representation. Instead, they were new opportunities for high-potential people and strategic

hires and the quality of our team output has never been better.

 

To measure our own efforts, we are creating a scorecard that will track multiple levels of diversity of our own

global marketing organization. We are far from perfect, and I know there will be challenges, but I am committed

to immediate, global, impact, rigorously measuring our performance and being transparent about the gaps to

overcome.

 

I am asking the same of each of you.

My expectation is that in the next 30 days, you will deliver formal plans – and within 12 months make good on

those plans. Thank you for working to significantly increase the percentage of women in top creative and

strategic roles on our account.

 

We owe this to ourselves, to each other and to future generations. By making the important and necessary

changes today, together we can bend the arc of history in favor of inclusion and opportunity.

Now comes the proof of our commitment. Thank you for joining us.

 

Antonio

Antonio Lucio

Chief Marketing & Communications Officer

HP Inc.

What’s an appropriate visual metaphor for an app that lets you scan handwritten notes to your smartphone? If you’re U.K. stationery brand Oxford, it’s a drone that follows you everywhere, lugging your paper notebooks.

In this new video from gyro Paris, flying reams of study materials distract. haunt, and taunt a bunch of stylish teens. All that to promote Oxford’s SOS Notes app, which lets users scan Oxford notebooks and save them to various devices as .pdf files.

Setting aside whether that’s a task that really needs its own app, it’s hard not to wonder if Oxford should really sell it as an oppressive, inescapable nuisance. Then again, that’s probably how most students feel about their homework already. And theoretically, the product is actually making their lives easier—mostly by reducing work to share notes with friends, but also by lightening their physical load, while they, say, skateboard.

That makes the playful, unencumbered tone of the clip, fit pretty nicely—even if it does seem weird for Oxford to introduce this new element of its brand as an extension of the surveillance state. The kids would probably roll their eyes at that kind of handwringing, though, then hop on a hoverboard and high five a robot. 

And in fairness, it looks like it must have been a lot fun to shoot, given the fleet of drones. Interrupting a make-out session is just rude, though.

CREDITS

Brand: Oxford?
Agency: gyro Paris
?Executive Creative Director: Sebastien Zanini, Pierre-Marie Faussurier?
Art Director: Aurelie Casimiri?
Copywriter: Margaux Castanier
?Business Director: Rebecca Cremonini?
Account Executive: Marion Lasselin?
Head of Strategy: Evelyne Bourdonne, Zoe Sabourdy
?Media Strategist: Pascal Deneuter?
TV Production: Yelena Nikolic?
Director: Romain Quirot?
Production Company: Fat Cat

Lincoln Financial Group is in the late stages of a creative review, with finalists briefed for final presentations, Adweek reports. According to the publication, Lincoln Financial spent around $25 million in measured media last year.

Incumbent Gyro, originally chosen by Lincoln Financial in November of 2011, at which time the agency debuted its “Chief Life Officer” campaign for the brand, is not participating in the review, which is being managed by Ark Advisors in New York. Adweek’s sources have identified the three finalists as Grey, FCB and Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners. Participating agencies have been briefed for final presentations, set for July, and will pitch out of their respective New York offices.

Here's an unpleasant if novel way to recommend the use of seat belts: Show people detailed instructions on dealing with injuries from not wearing one.

Gyro's Dubai office did just that in a new campaign to educate people about the importance of wearing seat belts in the backseat of cars. The campaign, for a charity called Buckle Up in the Back, takes the form of instructional guides—"How to Get Around in a Wheelchair," "How to Change Your Colostomy Bag"—for dealing with injuries you can sustain from not wearing a seat belt.

The guides are being tucked in the the seat pockets in the backs of taxis and rental cars in the UAE, where people will probably wish they didn't see them. The tagline is: "If you don't wear a seat belt, you're going to need all the help you can get."

"Instead of just telling people they are wrong for not buckling up, we decided to accept that people are ignoring these kinds of public health messages and give advice of how to deal with the day-to-day consequences of life without seat belts," said Gyro Dubai creative group head Neil Harrison. "These guides illustrate a very realistic and unfortunate future that can easily be avoided by buckling up."

Guides and credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Buckle Up in the Back
Agency: Gyro Dubai
Executive Creative Director: Gui Rangel?Account Director: Anna Start?Planner: Mark Haycock?Group Head/Copywriter: Neil Harrison?Art Directors: Charlotte Morand and Moses Anthony?Illustrator: Moses Anthony