Hasta La Creative!

Saatchi & Saatchi chairman Kevin Roberts told Business Insider that the gender diversity debate is over.

The publication pointed out that all six holding company CEOs are male and that while 46.4 percent of the ad industry is female, only 11.5 percent of creative directors are (a number up from the 3 percent figure that gave The 3% Conference its name when it was created in 2010). When Business Insider suggested that the gender diversity debate continues in the industry, Roberts responded, “Not in my view.” 

The publication brought up the 11.5% figure, as well as recent discrimination lawsuits, such as the one filed against former JWT CEO and chairman Gustavo Martinez by global chief communications officer Erin Johnson or the one alleging former RAPP CEO Alexei Orlov referred to various women as “fat cows” and declined to promote a female executive because she was “too pretty” (amongst other charges).

“Edward de Bono [Maltese physician, psychologist, and author] once told me there is no point in being brilliant at the wrong thing — the fucking debate is all over,” Roberts said. “This is a diverse world, we are in a world where we need, like we’ve never needed before, integration, collaboration, connectivity, and creativity … this will be reflected in the way the Groupe is.”

Publicis Groupe employs around 50 percent women, Saatchi & Saatchi around 65 percent.

When asked specifically about women like Cindy Gallop calling attention to ongoing gender issues in the industry, Roberts said, “I think she’s got problems that are of her own making. I think she’s making up a lot of the stuff to create a profile, and to take applause, and to get on a soap[box].”

Gallop responded by saying, “The best response to that is to throw it open to the industry, and ask the women and men of the ad industry, all around the world, to tweet at @krconnect to let him know whether they think I’m ‘making it all up’.”

Gallop has since tweeted about Roberts’ interview with a series of statements, including quoting a Facebook post from William Charnock, who said, “‘Issue is all over’ feels like a Donald Trump-ism – dismissive, insensitive, inaccurate.”

Plenty of other ad folks, meanwhile, have taken up Gallop’s call to tweet a piece of their mind at Roberts.

In Figliulo&Partners Founder and CEO Mark Figliulo‘s new opinion piece for Campaign, he sums up the current state of advertising as essentially a few holding companies, led by a handful of finance gurus, who then select business-forward leaders for individual agencies rather than creatives. The solution, according to Figliulo, is to “empower the storytellers to make sense of” the complex problems facing the current marketing and communications landscape.

“I don’t mean they should lead a campaign or a department, I mean they should lead the whole damn thing,” he clarifies, drawing a parallel to the fashion industry, where “it’s the creative directors who are the visionary leaders of their companies.” He argues, “The same thing has to happen for agencies.”

In other words, today’s creative leaders shouldn’t lead just teams of other creatives, “but strategic and analytic teams, media agency teams, client teams and ultimately millions of consumers.” Such leaders would need to be collaborative and have an understanding of disciplines sometimes seen as outside the creative purview, such as tech, strategy, analytics, marketing and even finance.

Figliulo makes the argument that having a CEO with a creative background is a “priority statement.” Choose a CEO with a financial background instead and you’ll get “procurement-led communications”; one with a client-service focus and you’ll get “‘give the client what they want’ communications.” At such agencies you have to look down the organizational chart quite a ways before you find someone with a creative background. With a creative leader, however, you’ll get the kind of “idea-led communications” that can lead the way forward.

Figliulo does sneak a bit of self-promotion into the piece, ending by presenting his own agency as evidence that a creative-first model can work. He says he “hand-picked an amazing group of partners that are truly exceptional at what they do,” noting that they are “much smarter about finance, strategy, production and client relationships than me.”

He adds, “They are even better at running a viable business than me, but we work well together because we all know that at the end of the day, it comes down to the power of the idea, and the skills of the creative leader to make that idea happen.” 

That would be him, right?

With cloning technology not quite where it needs to be yet, 71-year-old WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell will have to settle for the next best thing in WPP’s search for a new CEO. Sorrell’s wife Cristiana Falcone Sorrell is expected to give birth to the couple’s first child some time this year, as reported in The Drum and elsewhere.

This development comes after the weekend announcement that Mick Jagger, who is only a year older that Sir Martin, will be having his eighth child with current girlfriend and ballerina Melanie Hamrick. (Not that the two are related.)

Joking aside, the news also follows WPP’s announcement in April that it had begun an internal and external search for Sorrell’s successor. With his first child with his current wife on the way (he has three sons from a previous marriage), speculation about Sorrell’s eventual retirement will likely increase, especially since there is, at the moment, no Arthur Sadoun waiting in the wings. It also seems possible that this news explains the timing of WPP’s April announcement, although WPP made clear in that announcement that Sorrell’s retirement would be happening anytime soon.

“At some point we all leave our jobs,” WPP chairman Roberto Quarta told shareholders at the time of the company’s 2015 Annual Report. “Whether, in Sir Martin’s case, that happens tomorrow, in one, two, three, four or five years, or even over a longer period, we have already begun to identify internal and external candidates who should be considered.”

You may have missed the news last night after leaving the office on account of having things to do in real life, but Alexei Orlov announced his resignation from RAPP yesterday.

Around 5:30 yesterday, our inbox began filling up with tips indicating that Orlov had just sent out an all-staff email confirming that he would be leaving the Omnicom agency, effective immediately.

We do not have that email, which one tipster called “long-winded.” But we did run the agency’s release on Adweek, so we’ll recap for you here.

Orlov will be immediately replaced as acting CEO by Marco Scognamiglio, who previously held the titles EVP of client relationships and president of the EMEA and APAC regions. London-based Scognamiglio has spent 17 years with the RAPP organization and was widely seen as Orlov’s number two.

In a statement, he wrote: “Our company is on a great trajectory. We will remain laser-focused on our talent, driving results for clients and maintaining the strategic success of RAPP.” Scognamiglio will lead the global entity moving forward along with fellow 17-year veteran and COO/CFO Matthew Hafkin.

From Dale A. Adams, chairman/CEO of Omnicom’s DAS Group of Companies (which includes RAPP):

“Under the leadership of Alexei Orlov, RAPP has become a united global brand with a defining strategy and a point of differentiation in the marketplace. This strategy has led to more diverse and award-winning work, greater client retention and growth, and an impressive record of new business wins.”

Orlov’s statement read: “I am very proud that RAPP has grown in terms of clients and scope of work, which is a testament to our incredible talent. Marco and I have worked closely across a number of initiatives these past two years and RAPP is in good hands.”

He does not seem to have another job lined up at this time.

The news of Orlov’s departure came on the same day that Adweek and Campaign first posted on the RAPP legal team’s response to former U.S. president Greg Andersen’s suit. That response was filed on June 16 in L.A. but not covered by any trade press until yesterday. It essentially belittled and discredited Andersen in that way lawyers do, calling him terminally incompetent and labeling his claims “gross mischaracterizations” without directly disputing any of them.

Multiple sources who are either current or former RAPP employees also tell us that head of HR Carolyn Doud will soon leave the organization, which continues to employ her on retainer through August as per her severance agreement. This was a mutual decision.

According to tipsters, a group of employees from the RAPP office on Madison Avenue here in New York went out to dinner and drinks last night to discuss Orlov’s departure.

[Image via Business Insider/YouTube]

The curious case of Bill Grizack came to an end today as North Carolina Superior Court Judge John O. Craig sentenced the now-former executive strategist and agency partner to serve 57 to 81 months in state prison for defrauding McKinney and The Variable (formerly known as Pave Advertising).

As readers who have followed this story will know, in March Grizack pled guilty to three class C felonies related to charges of obtaining money/property by false pretenses and attempting to do so.

“This is a case about lies and deception that fueled an upper class lifestyle,” said state prosecutor W. Scott Harkey in a Forsyth County court today, and Judge Craig seemed impressed by Grizack’s work, stating, “There are certain politicians in this country who could probably take notes from this man.”

The story began in 2010 when Pave Advertising of Winston-Salem hired Grizack as a consultant. The shop eventually made him a full-time employee, and he developed a data-based software product that he called Brand Forensics. Pave later renamed itself The Variable and used this software as a key selling point for potential clients.

Today in court, Grizack’s defense attorney Bernard Desrosiers said:

“He created a software program that, from the victim’s own mouth, was ‘revolutionary.’ He started getting legitimate contracts from clients, but the two he wanted most he couldn’t get.”

Grizack wanted to be a partner, but in order to avoid paying a six-figure fee the agency partners required him to provide $500,000 in new revenue. The Variable president and partner Keith Vest read a statement in court explaining what happened next via “fake contacts, fake email addresses, fake phone numbers, and fake documents” by which the defendant “impersonated officers at these companies.”

“Grizack was not out to please anybody. He is a con man … addicted to lying.

He did not just spontaneously lie; he schemed. He caused our company to suffer extended financial losses and McKinney to do the same. [He caused] unimaginable emotional turmoil at work and at home … he almost destroyed a company. He strategically used acts of kindness to build our trust, and like any con man his tactics were just tactics.”

As part of his plea agreement, Grizack agreed to pay $135,000 to The Variable and $100,000 to McKinney Ventures as restitution for his crimes. But Vest acknowledged in his statement that neither agency is likely to ever see any of that money, adding, “All of this happened to us 3 years ago. We have recovered and thrived without his cancer within our walls.”

Harkey claimed in court today that the total losses for the two agencies amounted to approximately $4 million; he was also the party who suggested that the Coca-Cola and Brown-Forman contracts that Grizack faked would have been worth $269 million, according to an earlier report in The Winston-Salem Journal.

After firing Grizack in 2013, The Variable partnered with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to gradually build its case against him. Their reasons for doing so, according to Vest’s statement:

“We don’t want to see Grizack do this to other companies. He conned the company he worked for before us; he conned us and McKinney; the company he moved to after ours was able to uncover his deceit before it went too far.”

In his opening statement, Harkey said, “Right after his scheme was discovered by executives at Pave and McKinney, he went to [Colorado’s Egg Strategy] and did the exact same thing” before an unnamed party contacted that shop and let them know that Grizack’s $14 million McDonald’s contract was fake. A spokesperson for Egg Strategy declined to comment for this story, stating that the agency does not discuss current or former employees.

As we documented in the past, Grizack continued to get hired by top agencies even after he was fired by all three of the shops mentioned above. In 2014, he moved to California to work at Dailey Advertising as chief strategy officer for almost a year, and at the time of his guilty plea in March he was simultaneously employed or contracted by Interbrand, Goodby Silverstein & Partners and Venables Bell & Partners in San Francisco.

We’ve received quite a bit of information regarding this story over the past three and a half months. One anecdote that sticks out to us is the claim that the very name Grizack has become a verb of sorts in the agency world.

In explaining the reasoning behind the sentence, Judge Craig said that the fact that Grizack’s fraud led dozens of people to lose their jobs was first and foremost in his mind. He also cited an unnamed “rare genetic disorder that could be fatal and most likely will greatly shorten his lifespan” as a reason not to give the defendant a longer sentence, adding, “When he gets out, he will always have that hanging over his head in the event that he is able to get employment.”

He then added:

“Mr. Grizack, I don’t know what to say to you, sir. It was a very ingenious scheme and I was amazed at its complexity and its criminal ingenuity. It was a con game that was highly complex and highly believable. I have to say that in so many instances involving schemes such as this, the defendant is able to play on his ability to convince people.”

Craig also implied that the agencies in question may bare a bit of the blame in this case: “There is often a greed factor on the part of the victims … If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” he said, comparing the story to that of the goose that laid the golden eggs and adding, “I hope you will take this as a hard-earned lesson.”

Grizack took his opportunity to apologize to the court, his former employers and his wife and children while shaking his head profusely. “From my heart, I am truly, truly sorry,” he said before officers of the court placed him in handcuffs and led him away.

Desrosier summed up Grizack’s crimes as such: “He thought he could get away with it. He didn’t.”

A McKinney spokesperson declined to comment on the case after the sentencing. Before leaving the court today, Vest promised to provide an official statement to both Adweek and The Winston-Salem Journal.

Ed. note: I am currently working on an Adweek feature story on Grizack. If you worked with him, participated in any of his agency projects, or have more information about his case, please contact me at patrick.coffee@adweek.com or call me at 917-258-0966. Any subsequent conversations may occur on condition of anonymity, though on the record statement would be ideal.

Independent agency Kastner & Partners may own a barbership in Madrid, but New York commercial content studio Napoleon Group has “the best eyelash extension studio in town.”

Napoleon Group founder Marty Napoleon and Chief Operating Officer Spiro Kafarakis opened eyelash salon Lashes on 5th last year and have since offered agency and brand clients eyelash, manicure and pedicure sessions while waiting for everything from rendering and color correction to audio correction and other time-consuming post-production processes. Napoleon and Kafarakis also see the business as a perk for employees. 

“What can we do as a company to make our clients, partners, vendors and employees feel better in their day-to-day?” said Kafarakis. “If Lashes does it, then we have succeeded.”

“What is the difference between a $200.00 bottle of single malt scotch that I would share with a male creative director and $150.00 spa treatment that I would offer a female creative director?” Kafarakis asked. “Am I sexist to think that way? I don’t feel sexist, I strongly believe that the appeal of varied benefits meet the needs of that specific individual. I’m proud of the lashes salon, I am also proud that we are confident as a company to celebrate femininity. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a family that taught me that a woman is to be celebrated and pampered in a different fashion than a man.”

Kafarakis says he plans to offer discounted sessions at Lashes on 5th to attendees of the Three Percent conference in New York this fall. 

Several weeks ago, the legal teams of JWT, WPP and former CEO/chairman Gustavo Martinez each filed a motion to dismiss Erin Johnson‘s lawsuit against Martinez. Unsurprisingly, Johnson’s lawyers responded today by filing a memorandum in opposition to Martinez’s motion to dismiss the complaint, contending that JWT and WPP’s response to Johnson’s complaints show that “if you complain of discrimination, you will be attacked publicly, be branded as a liar and ostracized.”

The 23-page memorandum attempts to refute the various arguments made in the aforementioned motion to dismiss the case. Among the arguments in that motion for dismissal, Martinez’s lawyers contended that a text sent by Johnson to Martinez ten days before her legal team let WPP and JWT know that they would be filing a suit was evidence that Martinez’s behavior did not create a hostile work environment. In the message, Johnson told Martinez she had turned down a job offer, choosing instead to stay loyal to him and JWT. Johnson’s lawyers reject the “snippets of a text” as invalidating her argument that Martinez created a hostile work environment.

“There is no question that “going along to get along” is common in these cases,” they wrote in the memorandum. “Plaintiffs decision not to quit in reaction to a dispute with a more than decade-long employer is neither unusual, nor relevant to this motion.”

Regarding the text in question, the memorandum adds, “Discovery will show the full texts, emails, and the like among many relevant individuals and a jury can decide the significance of this text at that time, with a full record.”

The document also objects to the notion that there weren’t enough instances of offending behavior on Martinez’s part to constitute a case against him. “Corporate defendants list six such incidents [of offensive comments by Martinez],” the document states. “That behavior, without more, could state a claim for a hostile environment. In addition, however, defendants ignore that those allegations are far from describing isolated incidents, but instead are examples of sexist, humiliating and threatening behavior that was typical of Martinez.”

Johnson’s legal team also alleges, contrary to Martinez’s claims, that “despite Johnson’s repeatedly following ‘her employer’s well-established discrimination prevention policies,’ the discrimination continued, escalated and provoked retaliation and defendants’ ridicule.” (In the motion for dismissal, Martinez’s team claimed to find it “‘fascinating’ that Johnson did not use “her employer’s well-established discrimination prevention policies.”)

The memorandum also addresses the claims made by Martinez’s legal team that Martinez’s behavior didn’t amount to sexual harassment which created a hostile work environment by stating his comments, including retaliatory remarks made when Johnson objected to his previous behavior by stating “The sex-based nature of Martinez’s offensive comments and conduct frequently was explicit.”

“For example, when Johnson told Martinez that his comments about rape were not acceptable in the workplace, he responded by telling her that ‘American women are too sensitive,’” the document goes on. “Shortly thereafter, he grabbed Johnson around the neck with his arm, telling her to come to him so that he could rape her in the bathroom.” 

Additionally, Johnson’s lawyers address the claim that “all of the ‘complained of adverse actions occurred in 2015’ before plaintiffs first protected activity in February 2016.”

“Of course, just because Martinez says something does not make it so,” the document states, alleging that there were “multiple instances of protected activity in both 2015 and 2016, and many examples of adverse actions thereafter.”

For more on the most recent filing in the case, see Adweek’s coverage, which includes the document in full.

Erik Proulx is a longtime copywriter turned commercial director who has worked for such agencies as Allen & Gerritsen, Arnold and StrawberryFrog throughout his career.

He also recently ran a 5K race and shared an image of himself doing so on Facebook … as so many of everyone’s friends are wont to do. He was generous enough to joke about it with the subject line “Photographic evidence that I am indeed 44.”

His advertising colleagues, being the mischievous types who usually work in this business, immediately went to work placing him in all sorts of awkward places. It reminded us of that time Mekanism employees found so many good places for CEO Jason Harris in his best Bono pose.

First there was the running of the bulls above via MARC USA ACD Craig Ferrence. Then Erik visited Tiananmen Square.

Here he is rocking out with Taylor Swift…

…and hanging with #1 Donald Trump fan Kim Jong Un.

He also found his way into several iconic movie scenes.

Lest we forget that this is advertising, after all:

The gag kept going and eventually turned into a full folder under the hashtag #SeeErikRun. His friends got quite creative: here, for example, is an image of Proulx’s face as a tattoo on the butt cheek of one Angelina Jolie.

(We would embed these all and give credit to the very talented artists who created each of them, but you know how awful Facebook is. Just click on the full folder already. It contains many more amusing entries.)

WPP is not backing down.

That’s the summary of today’s filings in U.S. District Court, in which lawyers for the holding company, JWT and former CEO/chairman Gustavo Martinez submitted documents arguing that the judge in the case should dismiss Erin Johnson’s lawsuit on the federal, state and city levels.

In short, the law firm of Davis & Gilbert LLP argues in a 30-page document that Martinez’s behavior (which we and other outlets have documented extensively) does not amount to harassment and did not compromise Johnson’s ability to do her job despite the fact that it may well have been “offensive.” It also claims that many of the incidents mentioned in her suit are “irrelevant” since they (allegedly) occurred before she lodged her first formal complaints with JWT chief talent officer Laura Agostini in May 2015, thereby rendering her behavior “protected.”

As evidence that Martinez did not create a “hostile work environment” for Johnson, the lawyers mention a text message she allegedly sent him in February, 10 days before her own legal team let WPP and JWT know that they would be filing a suit.

In the message, Davis & Gilbert say Johnson told Martinez that she had rejected an outside job offer “because I am loyal to you and what you are doing. I felt like we had a good year together. So I hope I wasn’t wrong to stay. Lol”

The firm also calls Johnson’s amended complaint alleging violations of the Equal Pay Act and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act “frivolous,” essentially arguing that Martinez’s allegedly discriminatory behavior did not affect her as a white woman and that she cannot claim that he sexually harassed her because he never “actually talked about ‘the sex.’” This despite him (again, allegedly) stating that she should “come to him so he could ‘rape [her]’ in the bathroom” on one occasion after she told him that rape jokes like the one he made at a 2015 meeting with clients and employees at a Miami hotel were inappropriate.

Johnson’s lawyers spoke to AdAge today and implied that they had not expected today’s update, stating, “we are looking forward to submitting our response and getting on with this search for the truth” and adding that the WPP legal team was “plucking one text [message] and misstating it” in the interest of discrediting Johnson.

The only real conclusion one can draw from the latest filing is that the WPP/JWT legal team has decided to stick with its strategy of downplaying the significance of the incidents mentioned in Johnson’s suit after quickly abandoning efforts to deny that they had ever occurred.

Martinez’s law firm, which he hired after resigning in March, also filed its own separate motion to dismiss today using the same rationale.

As soon as Tamara Ingram became JWT’s new global chairman/CEO following the March resignation of Gustavo Martinez, she let the world know that “diversity and inclusion will be at the top of my agenda … [because] companies don’t value women enough.”

According to AdAge’s sources, she already made good on that promise by planning a Diversity and Inclusion Council.

AdAge’s report includes several interesting details:

• Ingram announced the Council in an internal video
• The agency has partnered with consulting firm inQUEST to act as an objective third party reviewing its efforts on this front
• Ingram will also launch a “talk to me” hotline for employees who feel threatened or uncomfortable about “certain issues”

Perhaps most surprisingly, JWT chief talent officer Laura Agostini–who played a central role in the Erin Johnson lawsuit and allegedly declined to act on Johnson’s repeated complaints about Martinez’s behavior–will retain her position.

JWT also hired former Y&R chief talent officer Celia Berk to fill the newly-created role of chief employee engagement officer while simultaneously acting as group talent partner within the larger WPP organization. Her LinkedIn profile describes the new gigs as such:

As Chief Employee Experience Officer, reports to the CEO and focuses on ensuring the work lives of JWT employees are as rewarding as possible.

As Group Talent Partner, reports to WPP’s Chief Client Team Officer and works with the company’s 45 global account teams to advance WPP’s strategic focus on “horizontality.”

According to the AdAge story (and yes, they definitely scooped us on this), Ingram released an internal video in which she essentially repeated the same points in the U.K. appearance linked atop this post regarding the importance of “represent[ing] all people,” including every member of JWT’s own staff.

An agency spokesperson referred us to WPP’s PR firm Finsbury, which has not provided any comment at the time of this post. It would certainly seem like someone within the agency spoke to AdAge, but there’s no official statement or rollout yet.

Expect to hear more next week.