Things Just Got Real For Agencies

In November, I attended in Amsterdam an excellent meeting of 50 or so Executive Creative Directors, Chief Creative Officers and founders of agencies. One observation was nearly all the attendees happened to be white men.

Just a month earlier, I had attended a NY Times conference in Brooklyn. About 200 women with a 2-day program of CEOs, venture capitalists and subject-matter-experts providing real world board-level insight on how they engineer diversity in their big companies. One of the predictions was that as revenue and investment become contingent on levels of diversity and inclusion, change will become a priority.

Granted, the focus of each meeting was very different – and the Amsterdam conference was not a representative sample of the larger marketing services industry. But it was still striking to discover along with my agency-running peers the lack of diversity in our own ranks that was so well explored by the NY Times conference in November. In fact as of June 2018, the first time a marketing services holding company appears on Thomas Reuters IX Global Diversity and Inclusion Indexis WPP at #64 of the top 100 (and just newly on the list this year).

Now in December, Jennifer Faull reports for The Drum that Diageo’s CMO, Syl Saller:

“has personally written to every one of the advertising and media agencies on its roster asking to see statistics on gender diversity and pay gaps. Individual managers for its brands, which include Baileys, Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker, Tanqueray, had been given the autonomy to ask these question of agency partners. However, as Gráinne Wafer, the global head of brand for Bailey’s, explained earlier this year, she had been met with “blank faces” from a number of bosses. Saller - gatekeeper of the advertiser's £1.8bn global ad spend - has now stepped in and requested that all of its agencies report back on diversity measures.”

The fact that agencies are having their commitment to diversity and inclusion dragged into the light will likely have financial consequences (losing clients or pitches, for example), if they do not begin showing results.