Hasta La Creative!

FCB is continuing to build up its San Francisco office with four key new hires including former R/GA New York executive Bruno Nakano, who joins the team as creative director, a title he shares with Rodrigo Linhares.

The other three new appointments include Jordan Wells to vp and director of new business, Laura Feder to account supervisor and Frankie Donlon to integrated project manager. A FCB West spokeswoman said all of these positions are new to the agency.

“2017 has been a phenomenal year for FCB West,” FCB West CEO Joe Oh said in a statement. “And yet we aspire to be so much more. The addition of these four amazingly talented and lovely people is an investment we are making as a business and a culture to turn those aspirations into reality.”

Specifically, the shop attributed the bolstering of the San Francisco office to FCB Global’s big win of the Clorox global creative account last year. The work for Clorox is split between FCB’s San Francisco and Chicago offices.

Nakano joins FCB West from R/GA New York, where he served as senior art director and worked on the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8. It appears he will work alongside creative director Linhares, who joined FCB West in July and remains at the San Francisco shop.

“Bruno brings with him an infectious and insatiable thirst for doing great work,” said Karin Onsager-Birch, FCB West evp and chief creative officer. “We were lucky to land him as the go-to mentor for all our art directors and designers, and the visual guide across all clients as we continue to raise the bar for our work.”

Nakano has won several awards including one of the Top 10 Art Directors Worldwide by the Cannes Lions Report in 2011 and one of the 15 Ones to Watch at the One Show Young Guns in 2015.

Meanwhile, Wells hails from San Francisco digital strategy and design agency Extractable, Feder from Grey New York and Donlon from communications and marketing agency Hill Holliday.

On Monday, M&C Saatchi chief creative officer Justin Tindall published a “private view” in Campaign in which, among other things he was bored of, he stated he was “Bored of diversity being prioritised over talent.”

Predictably, this did not go over well and criticism of the remarks was swift and widespread. Among those weighing in were Cindy Gallop and Cheil London executive creative director Caitlin Ryan, who wrote a “Why being ‘bored of diversity’ is not good enough: a response to Justin Tindall,” also published in Campaign, in which she asked him to “see diversity not as a threat to good creative work, but as a way to get better work out there.”

She concluded by telling him to  “wake the fuck up and do what’s fair and right for every young creative who is female or from a different background to you. Not because it ticks a diversity box – but because it will make the work that we all love better too.”

Today, perhaps unsurprisingly, Tindall issued an apology, in which he admits “my ‘bored with diversity’ comment was wrong. In the post, addressed to Caitlin, he apologized to everyone who took “unintended offence” to the comment and stressed “it was absolutely not my intention to undermine the diversity agenda in any way whatsoever. In fact, the opposite is true.”

He explained that his frustration with the term “diversity” is “provoked by a deep sense that ad agencies continue to prioritise predictably short-term solutions to what is a long-term issue” and one which “requires long-term strategies to maintain and cultivate our industry’s strength and depth of talent.”

Not everyone feels the apology was sincere or came swiftly enough, however. In a response to a post by Gallop on LinkedIn about the apology, one commenter pointed out that his apology only came after “someone of his career level within his industry said something” while another called it “Too little too late” and said they were “Not buying it at all.”

Image: Campaign

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-138489" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/abn-prod/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2017/10/BrandWriter_45_Instagram_previewFreelance creative director/copywriter Brian Thompson is turning 45 this month. But rather than worrying about aging out of the industry and throwing a pity party, he’s actually doing something to promote diverse young talent.

More specifically, he’s trying to raise $4,500 for E4 Youth, an Austin non-profit organization which funds programs that mentor diverse talent to pursue creative careers, before he turns 45. Before going freelance, Thompson served as an associate creative director for T3 and WCG in Austin and as director of brand and creative for Golfsmith International.

“I freelance for a lot of good people at different agencies, but too often, those people look a lot like me,” Thompson said in a statement on his site. “And that’s not healthy for the work, the business and the country.”

Head to BrandWriter.com/45th to chip in.

So you think the news is all bad? Are you missing that rhetorical swing in your step? Need a little optimism with that pre-lunch coffee?

Barker creative director Sandi Harari published “An Open Letter to My Male Ad Industry Colleagues: 5 Things You Need to Do Now” in HuffPost yesterday.

In short, Harari thinks that maybe … just maybe … the ad industry has turned a corner on gender relations.

She then calls on men in the agency world to follow five general maxims when interacting with their female counterparts. They generally boil down to advocating for female colleagues and not being a jerk (or ask those co-workers to do the same).

The five points are: “Give Us Credit,” “Be An Advocate,” “Stop Making Us Feel Guilty,” “Respect Our Unique Management Style” and “Give Us The Mic.”

To the first point, Harari asks that men praise their female coworkers both to their faces and “behind their backs,” since “women underestimate their own natural talents” and aren’t as likely to sing their own praises as their male counterparts. This goes hand in hand with being an advocate for women in the industry, and Harari asks that men help counteract “the confidence gap” by speaking up on behalf of women who aren’t getting the recognition they deserve. In a survey released by 4A’s last year, around a third of female participants responded that they had been passed over for promotions or assignments due, at least in part, to their gender. So Harari’s argument has some research behind it.

For the next point, she cites a 3M study which found that “women on average are working longer and harder than men,” so maybe don’t make that working mom in your office feel guilty for leaving at 5:30. Women already “often feel guiltier than men and are hard-wired for empathy,” and you’re really not doing anyone any favors with the added pressure.

Contrary to some popular opinions, not everyone takes pride in being described as “harsh” or believes that acting like “more of a prick” (advice once given to Harari by a male co-worker) will help them scale the career ladder. So Harari asks that her colleagues—and, by extension, everyone in the business—respect the fact that different people have different management styles. And maybe those even work for them!

Finally, Harari calls on giving women in the office who may not be loud or outspoken more of a platform to voice their opinions and concerns. In the aforementioned 4A’s survey, 42 percent of women said that they had been left out of decision-making processes due to their gender.

She concludes on a hopeful note, stating that “We are moving in the right direction” … just not fast enough.

Back in June, Grey London CCO Nils Leonard, who was also named a chairman back in 2014, left the agency along with CEO Lucy Jameson and managing director Natalie Graeme. A statement explained that Leonard was leaving to “start a new venture.”

Well, if you’ve been wondering what Leonard could possibly be up to since leaving Grey behind: wonder no more. He’s launched a new coffee company, along with partners Richard Hardwick, David Foster and Andrew Richardson, called Halo, which Adweek describes as producing “the world’s first fully compostable coffee capsule for home coffee machines.” The capsules are compatible with home Nespresso machines (Richardson is a former Nespresso director) and include premium coffee varieties formerly unavailable in that format. So, all jokes about the crowded coffee market aside, Halo does have a unique angle at least.

Of course, there’s an ad announcing Halo’s arrival. The 60-second spot focuses on the environmental impact of typical, non-biodegradable coffee capsules, before informing viewers there’s now an environmentally-friendly alternative and concluding with the tagline, “The world’s best coffee. In a way that’s best for the world.” (A tad misleading since a French press doesn’t require a pod or filters.) There’s also a separate launch anthem.

“My theory is that within a year everyone will be using biodegradable pods,” Leonard told Adweek.

“It should be fucking illegal. I mean, it’s insane,” he added, in reference to non-biodegradable pods, whose inventor, John Sylvan came to regret their creation. “The stats are sickening. So, I think in a year that will be the case, and then it’s about who has the best coffee. And I’d say that would be us.”

Leonard didn’t want a typical launch campaign for the product.

“I was desperate with the guys, when we sat down, to say, look, I don’t want to do advertising,” he told Adweek. “I don’t really want to make any advertising at all. What I want is for the product to be the advert for itself. And I think that’s where we are.”

It sure seems like they made an ad (or two), though. And Leonard is expected to renter the ad industry in some sort of new venture alongside his former Grey chairmen in the near future. Until then, though, he’ll be focused on Halo — and presumably drinking a lot of coffee.

In case you missed it (you didn’t): advertisers everywhere are up in arms after it was revealed that Facebook has “vastly overestimated” the average viewing time for videos on its platform, according to a scoop in The Wall Street Journal. And because every scandal needs to have -gate added to it, this one has become known as “OverstateGate.” UGH.

Several weeks ago, Facebook admitted, via a post on its Advertiser Help Center, that the metric it used to measure average video view team was flawed because it only took into account videos viewed for more than three seconds. In the same post, Facebook reassured advertisers it was introducing a new metric to fix the problem. But the full scope of just how much Facebook overestimated video viewing times came to light more recently, when the social network told Publicis Media and WPP’s Group M that it likely overestimated the amount by 60-80 percent. 

“We recently discovered an error in the way we calculate one of our video metrics,” Facebook said in a statement. “This error has been fixed, it did not impact billing, and we have notified our partners both through our product dashboards and via sales and publisher outreach. We also renamed the metric to make it clearer what we measure. This metric is one of many our partners use to assess their video campaigns.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell weighed in on the matter, expressing his displeasure with the situation and insinuating the larger underlying problems suggested by it. He told Bloomberg that it underscore the need for a third party, such as ComScore (which WPP has invested in) to oversee such metrics. 

“We have also been calling for a long time for media owners like Facebook and Google not to mark their own homework and release data to ComScore to enable independent evaluation,” he told the publication. “The referee and player cannot be the same person.”

Rival holding company Publicis is in agreement with Sorrell. “In an effort to distance themselves from the incorrect metrics, Facebook is deprecating [the old metrics] and introducing ‘new’ metrics in September. Essentially, they’re coming up with new names for what they were meant to measure in the first place,” The Wall Street Journal reports that an unnamed Publicis executive said in a memo to clients. “This once again illuminates the absolute need to have 3rd party tagging and verification on Facebook’s platform. Two years of reporting inflated performance numbers is unacceptable.”

Publicis PR referred all related media queries to Facebook, but let us all assume that they are rightly pissed as we wonder whether Andrew Keller has received some pointed queries from his agency contacts this week.

The unfortunate conclusion here is that Facebook will catch only momentary heat for this one. Note how restrained Sorrell’s quote was given the scale of the “error” and consider the fact that Publicis and WPP and all the other partners don’t have much of a choice but to continue advertising with Zuck. Happy Friday.

Last week, we wrote about The Barbarian Group interim CEO Aaron Lau taking over for Peter Kim less than nine months after he succeeded Sophie Kelly, who had served in the position since 2011, as chief executive. Multiple sources told us that Cheil Worldwide made the decision to replace Kim, but he disputed that claim in a blog post yesterday, which arrived on the heels of a Digiday article in which co-founder Rick Webb told the publication the agency is “literally being run into the ground.”

Kim wrote that when he took over as CEO last December, he was “tasked with turning an agency around that was in worse shape than anyone realized,” a statement which seems to be corroborated by the aforementioned Digiday piece. 

According to Kim, “the actions we’ve taken over the past three quarters have allowed the agency to continue producing great work for global brands and left the financials cleaner and more transparent than they’ve been for many years,” and “With this phase of transformation complete, I made the decision to separate from The Barbarian Group and Cheil Worldwide.”

He added: “don’t believe everything you read in the trades. Many articles are tipped by people with personal agendas and written for today’s Gawker-engendered media environment, designed to maximize clicks, shares, and gossip. The truth is out there, but only half of it will ever make Agency Spy.”

Any enlightenment on this topic from the comments section?

One thing is undeniably true: Americans (and, by extension, American advertising agencies) are currently engaged in an at-times uncomfortable conversation whose central component is race.

This goes beyond the fact that African-American representation in advertising is quite low and that many conversations have begun within the agency world concerning the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the industry’s ability to speak to that demographic.

Four high-level black creative leaders want to change this trend … or at least move the resulting conversations in a positive direction. Butler, Stern, Shine and Partners ECD Keith Cartwright got the initiative started along with colleagues Geoff Edwards (DOJO co-founder and creative executive at Creative Artists Agency), Apple/Beats global CD Jayanta Jenkins and Amusement Park chairman/CEO/CCO Jimmy Smith.

The four have come together to launch an initiative they call Saturday Morning because — as they put it on their home page — “Sunday is the most divided day in America” while Saturday is a time for emotional calm and, hopefully, mutual respect.

According to the release, the four got together for the first time recently to discuss their own experiences as black men moving through life in America and the ad industry along with the attendant challenges and opportunities. They now want to extend that conversation to other agencies as well as those who are interested in the topic at hand but do not work in the advertising industry.

According to their mission statement, they will coordinate on more such events and then release a quarterly PEACE BRIEF summarizing work done in attempting to “tackle a peace-related cause and/or initiative.” The release continues, “This could be in the form of helping passing a law, building awareness around an injustice or helping garner donations for a cause.” The ultimate goal is to counter the pervasive idea that “black lives are in some way not as important as others,” and the project implies that the ad industry can and should play a role in moving this conversation to another, more positive place.

Here’s the full letter as sent by Mr. Cartwright to various media outlets, ours included:

This letter starts with the highest level of optimism, that powerful voices are gearing up right now to take a stand.
I don’t know if there’s ever been an opportunity as great as this to make change.

My Friday morning began with a text message. I reached out to three of my friends:

Geoff Edwards,
Jayanta Jenkins
Jimmy Smith.

The text read, “We need to come together. And say something.”

We’ve all known each other for some time, and not once have we sat down together to have a conversation. Friday’s text led to a meeting Saturday morning in Los Angeles, one of the best meetings of my career.

We talked about our families, our careers, and how shocking it was that we’d never done this before—but how important it was that we were doing it now. Geoff, Jimmy, Jayanta and I talked about our own experiences growing up as black males, and the racism we’ve encountered in our lives. None of us grew up in the same city or town, but we all shared similar stories and have had to approach our lives and careers with a dual consciousness. To this day we all still share the unique fear that comes with flashing lights in a rearview mirror, and the bias placed against us for the color of our skin.

The brutal deaths of Philando Castile, Alton Sterling and the five police officers murdered in Dallas, Texas, brought us together this Saturday Morning to talk about how we can help change the perception that black lives are not as important as others. The dehumanizing effects of this belief are causing African-Americans across this country to be brutalized, incarcerated and even killed, at an alarming rate.

How do we as an industry change that, and how do we enlist others around our industry to join the discussion?

It has been said that Sunday morning is the most segregated day in America. So, let’s get in front of that together. If Sunday morning is seen as a day of division, then Saturday morning should represent both a day of change and a way to dispel the myth that there is no hope for tomorrow. SATURDAY MORNING will be an organization that helps build awareness, promote change and shift the overall perception that black lives are in some way not as important as others.

Our vision is that SATURDAY MORNING will be a coalition across industries. This letter is the first call to action. We’ll now begin the process of inviting thought leaders across technology, music, entertainment, advertising, media, art and design, and anyone willing to participate in this conversation. Our action will be brought to life through a quarterly PEACE BRIEF, which will outline our objectives. Those objectives could be anything from raising money for a foundation or helping pass legislation, to bringing awareness to a cause or creating peace-based technology—all in an effort to make every Saturday Morning better than the last. We are currently active, working to bring this vision to life. There will be more to come in following weeks.

Please join us at saturdaymorning.co  as we start to seed our beginning efforts. If you want to be part of this movement and take a role as we put ideas into action and identify opportunities where we can have impact, please email us at: info@saturdaymorning.co.

Again, this letter ends with the highest level of optimism, that powerful voices are gearing up right now to take a stance. There’s never been an opportunity as great as this to make change.

Sincerely,

Keith Cartwright
Geoff Edwards
Jimmy Smith
Jayanta Jenkins

Today in UGH: celebrity creative directors. What are they about, really?

There’s the obvious earned media calculation, because no one gets more headlines than Random Famous Person, whether that coverage is justified or not. But we are truly curious on the ROI front, because we’d LOVE to know how much these celebrities get paid for their glamorous jobs … and how much the brands in question actually benefit.

We mention this because Wild Turkey named Matthew “Alright” McConaughey as its new creative director today. That announcement outweighs the more significant news: Wild Turkey has gone to JWT after a little less than three years with MDC’s Vitro.

Dude does fit the profile: he’s white, male, over 35, sometimes gets mildly creative with his facial hair and has been known to indulge in the odd recreational drug experience. He’s also into making short films like this one, which he directed.

The summary: “The only thing our great story was missing was a great storyteller. Meet Wild Turkey’s new Creative Director, Matthew McConaughey.” We will take their word for it, because we lack both the time and interest to watch a 6-minute clip about a movie star hanging out at a bourbon mill. He did at least narrate the project himself.

From the release: “A Wild Turkey fan, McConaughey first visited the lauded distillery a couple of years ago … It was there at the distillery, high above the Kentucky River, that he was introduced to Jimmy and Eddie Russell, the Bourbon Hall of Fame father and son Master Distiller team who have worked at the Wild Turkey Distillery for 97 years collectively.”

And then he agreed to be their lead creative person, right??

As you know, this Hire a Celebrity practice is not a new thing. The most recent offender was Bacardi, which named Swizz Beats as its new “creative director” with “oversight for the entire Bacardi portfolio of brands” because of course the many talented people at BBDO don’t have that one down.

Campari bought Wild Turkey in 2013 for $575 million to jump on the everyone drinking bourbon trend.

How will Mr. McConaughey work with JWT? We have no idea. The release didn’t even mention the agency’s name or the fact that Wild Turkey recently held a review — as evidenced by the fact that Eric Weisberg, who just became global CCO at Doner, listed the bourbon brand among the accounts he led at JWT. A source on this recent Vitro story told us that Wild Turkey had recently decided to transfer a greater share of its marketing budget to its international agency partners. The PR firm that pitched us this one, however, confirmed that there was a review and that JWT won.

Honestly, we feel that Matthew’s talents as a creative director might have been put to better use in helping HBO avoid the embarrassment that was True Detective Season 2.

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.