Month: June 2020

“Brand-building is more important than ever now,” said Bradbury. “That’s why it was important for us to continue on the path we had already planned prior to the pandemic.”.

That doesn’t mean he won’t tactically adjust plans for the luxury cars. However, any changes will be to level off media spend to match consumption and demand, instead of the strategy of continuously fluctuating like some other advertisers in this challenging time. Moving forward, Bradbury’s plan is to focus mainly on brand-building ads for Jaguar.  

This seems to be a tried and true approach in an automotive industry focused on building long-term relationships with existing customers as well as potential new ones. 

“The process of selling a car and a brand experience to customers takes quite a bit of time and auto advertisers realize they can’t just abandon that for a few months, or they’ll lose any momentum and value that’s been built up,” said Bob Regular, CEO at ad tech vendor Infolinks.

Bradbury’s plan for 2020 was always to come up with ways to give Jaguar a more perennial presence throughout the year. March, followed by September, are traditionally the industry’s key marketing periods as they are usually when auto manufacturers launch new models. In many ways, the pandemic-induced recession only heightened the need for that planned brand-building. Indeed, economic slumps can be the best chance an advertiser gets to buy ads cheaply at the same time rivals reduce their own outlays. 

Indeed, Bradbury is buying more big-ticket TV ads after a quiet period where social media, mainly via organic posts with some paid ads, was Jaguar’s biggest outlay as a result of stay at home orders. Current ads position Jaguar’s cars as modern, British and innovative. And there’s pressure on those ads to capitalize on the few sales opportunities there are in the market now that car showrooms are reopening across England. Targeted TV ads bought via Sky’s Adsmart platform will also be used to help entice viewers to their local Jaguar showroom, said Bradbury.

Inevitably, some of Jaguar’s TV spending will be directed into the much-anticipated return of live sports. 

“We have been working closely with our partners to navigate the impacts of Covid-19 on the sporting calendar and recognize the opportunity for more meaningful and purpose-driven relationships going forward,” said Bradbury.

It’s an opportune time for Jaguar to be buying ads, particularly on TV where consumption on both linear and online channels is up, but there’s less competition for those viewers. So much so that TV ad spending in the U.K. could plummet anywhere between 30% and 50% in the second half of the year, according to Warc and Enders Analysis. It goes some way to explaining why Jaguar chose to go ahead with its sponsorship of the new Sky Documentaries, which was concluded prior to the pandemic. 

Similarly, Jaguar has also tried to stick by news publishers. 

“Our strategy before Covid-19 was to take a progressive approach to digital display targeting and brand safety to ensure our advertising only appeared alongside reputable journalism, this has continued to be our approach throughout the pandemic period. We do not block covid content,” said Bradbury. 

Plans are also underway to quicken Jaguar’s transition to an online retail model as the uncertainty of the recession necessitates experimentation. Everything from virtual demonstrations to the signing of documents online is being looked at currently.  

“Auto retailers are going to have to adapt in the face of changing consumer journeys,” said Lawrence Dodds, client director at agency Universal McCann. “There are challenges with the cost factor, the fact that consumers may not be as willing to make big-ticket purchases and for those that do the typical process will change. Auto retailers will have to adapt in the face of changing consumer journeys. Retail Darwinism is now a thing.”

“This is a moment when there is no sitting on the sidelines,” said Clark. “As many people have said, silence is tantamount to complicity. So it’s important to have a voice.”

Antifa is like an advertising case study both describe made-up things no one has ever interacted with in the real world

— R/GA (@RGA) June 10, 2020

Good night. Sweet dreams. Defund the police.

— R/GA (@RGA) June 6, 2020

Targeting journalists and medics is straight from the Assad playbook. Congratulations.

— R/GA (@RGA) June 4, 2020

Of course doing so is about more than tweets, as many agencies have put out statements in the last week or so that they will do more and do better when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Still, R/GA is using its Twitter account to speak to its values as an agency not only publicly but for its employees.

“It’s extremely important to show employees, especially our black employees, as forcefully and publicly as we can, that we support them and we care enough to speak out,” said Clark. “‘Use your platform for good’ is advice we give clients all the time. I don’t know why we would think we were any different.”

Generally, the R/GA account is critical of the agency business so the current tweets aren’t a departure from the normal persona, which already stands out among agency Twitter accounts.

We face a moment of shared pain and shared responsibility—most importantly we face a moment of truth and accountability. We stand together with our Black colleagues, clients and partners in fighting racial injustice and inequality.

— Ogilvy (@Ogilvy) June 1, 2020

That said, “obviously the tweets lately have been more pointed, even angry,” said Clark. “But I’ve always tweeted things that are critical of aspects of business or the corporate world or culture that I think are harmful or just nonsensical.”

“[R/GA’s Twitter account] hasn’t been afraid to be critical but also understands its platform in the larger cultural dialogue,” said Bennett D. Bennett, principal at The Aerialist, a new consulting firm he founded. “It’s on brand, but also hopefully leads to R/GA taking an activist stance as an agency.”

To back up what the agency is doing with its online persona, the company is taking steps to make sure its black employees feel supported. For example, they are given mental health days so that they can process the moment as need be. The agency will also be closed on Friday June 19th, which is known as Juneteenth, a celebration of the emancipation from slavery in the U.S. Beyond that, R/GA is making its allyship training program, which was launched earlier this year, mandatory for all employees as well as reviewing its vendor relationships to look for ways the agency can work with more black-owned businesses. And the agency will also be donating money to the New York chapter of the National Urban League.

When it comes to tweeting from the agency Twitter account, Clark has been able to tweet what he feels and do so without approvals for the last decade. This time has been largely been no different. During the first weekend of protests, Clark was on Slack with R/GA CMO Jess Greenwood talking about the protests. The two came to a “directional understanding” but there hasn’t been an approvals process for the tweets.

“I don’t have to submit my tweets for review before I post them,” said Clark. “I’ve been doing this for more than 10 years, so there is a lot of trust, and I have a lot of leeway.”

It helps that agency staff and leadership support the effort. R/GA CEO Sean Lyons told Clark that the agency must “back up what we say with actions, and we have to do right, and commit to it for the long haul.” As for clients, Clark hasn’t heard anything from them about the tweets but has seen ex-clients like and retweet them.

The tweets help to send a message that the agency is listening, “share the values of our employees, and that we’re engaged,” said Clark. “We’re far from perfect. We have a lot of work to do, particularly when it comes to diversifying our executive leadership. But to be silent would be pretty disheartening to a lot of people.”

Publishers say that having more stakeholders on video calls makes decisions happen quicker. Publisher and agencies’ meetings with clients can often involve dozens of employees because clients have adopted the 360-degree marketing strategies that need collaboration across digital video, programmatic and paid social teams. 

“‘Can we do programmatic and can it be done quickly?’” said the executive. “We’re having those conversations much, much more now.”

Macro-market dynamics and the environment have forced this. If the last four months, and the subsequent events following George Floyd’s death, is anything to go by, brands are stuck in a rapid cycle of pausing, changing creative messages to support and reassure, before returning to selling products, helped by publishers.

Agencies also feel the need to move things forward rapidly. Over the last few weeks, Manning Gottlieb OMD hosted a team meeting with 300 of the agency’s clients, sharing information about business and sector challenges. It’s also running MG Academy, a week-long video training course to help clients ‘become better clients,’ by building better strategic media plans, understanding the key characteristics of each channel, or what arguments a TV planner would need to capture more budget from the social media team. For media owners, it’s running three sessions each week, divided into departments like audio visual, display or programmatic, to give publishers a base-level understanding.   

“Our agenda was to stop generic catch-ups, we tell you everything you need to know so we can get down to the brief,” said Lewis Shaw, managing partner, head of investment at Manning Gottlieb OMD. “We’re more efficient because we have to be.”

While agencies are quick to stress that, despite the urgency, briefing media owners are still based on strategy, the high-octane pace with fewer team members will be hard to maintain. More effective ways of working remotely still need to be hashed out. While companies are discussing return-to-work plans, they will be phased over the next six months or more according to publishers interviewed for this article. The number of meetings in person will be lower.

Both the buy and sell side have got more creative in fostering relationships remotely. Ad tech firms demo products while delivering meals via Uber Eats, and TV networks are offering agency executives subscriptions to meditation apps.

Without the in-person meetings and ways to build relationships, publishers are cognizant of agency exec’s time. One magazine publisher with dozens of titles has redeployed its designers, previously working on magazine layouts, to design decks to send to prospective clients.

“Having well-designed quality assets matters more now that you can’t take the whole planning team out to breakfast, that cadence has gone,” said the publisher. “Everyone is distracted with what’s going on in the world, you need a really succinct way of getting your story across. The commercial team is going out into the market more. It’s not about who runs the best pub quiz and the best jollies, it’s who is winning the ground war.”

“I’ve always been like, ‘I can take that, I can deal,’” said Brandon of the racist culture he’s dealt with at multiple agencies. “But right now, the combination of what’s happening with how my agency has handled everything up to this point—to be candid, I feel disrespected. We’ve received a number of emails but not one of them has any points of action. So obviously when the fifth one comes through, I’m like, ‘Ok, now you’re insulting my intelligence.’” 

Brandon is not alone in feeling that his agency needs to do more. He’s among the 600 Black advertising employees who signed an open letter to the ad industry earlier this week calling for change.

The letter, which was spearheaded by Nathan Young, group strategy director at Periscope, and Bennett D. Bennett, principal at Aerialist, a new consultancy he founded, detailed 12 action items for agencies to take to improve the workplace for Black and non-Black people of color employees. It’s a powerful example of how agency employees, fed up with the lip-service or inaction on the part of agencies when it comes to true diversity and inclusion, are trying to push for change from the bottom up. 

“What we wanted to do was to write a letter that reflected the lived experiences of Black agency professionals across the country,” said Young. “Agency leaders need to pay attention. This is us communicating openly and honestly in a way we haven’t had the opportunity to do prior to this. If anyone had asked any of the people who signed the letter what to do to make agencies better, they would’ve given them a list close to this.” 

With the letter, agency employees call for agencies to make a commitment to improving Black representation at agencies as well as to publicly release diversity data, among other actions. It’s unclear how agencies will respond.

IPG, WPP, Omnicom Group, Publicis Groupe and Dentsu did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Paris-based Havas, meanwhile, said that the company is prohibited by French law from collecting global data based on the ethnic background of its employees; however it is “using the list they created and the effort overall to help guide business decisions.” 

As agencies have grappled with how to respond to the current moment, many have relied on emails to employees to tell that they are listening and that they will evaluate their diversity and inclusion policies as well as that they will offer mental health days. But agency employees and industry observers say they want agencies to do more to support Black employees and to better their workplace culture. 

“At this point, empty statements are being shared left and right, and whatever is said needs to be backed up with direct action,” said Lanae Spruce, senior director of social strategy and special projects at iOne Digital. “What are the ratios of Black people and people of color in senior leadership? How are you supporting anti-racism practices within your organization? Brands and agencies have a unique opportunity to yield the floor right now and listen. We’ll all be better from it.” 

Employees pushing for change

That the push for change in agencies comes from employees rather than the top executives isn’t surprising. “[It] starts at the bottom because those are the people who often have the most to gain by pushing for changes in company culture,” said Iliana Ortega, strategist at Publicis in New York. “We are the ones doing the literal work and, because of that, we know the pain points of agency life better than those who sit at the top.”

“Change is happening, yes has it been slow and we need to do better,” said Simon Fenwick, evp of talent, equity and inclusion at the 4A’s. “All great movements are ones that are led from grass roots and bring change from the bottom. This feels different, as a white man I understand that change needs to come from me, I shouldn’t rely on Black people to drive change. It is not their problem to fix, it is ours.” 

Still, according to Black employees, working together with other Black employees at a number of agencies throughout the industry to push for change is crucial. “I’m the only Black creative in my agency,” said a Black creative at an independent agency who asked for anonymity. “I’m the only one who can really shout and you can only shout to a degree because people think your attitude is annoying. The fact that there are no Black people makes it easy for agencies to say they can’t solve it because they don’t have those Black people.” 

Agency employees say they are no longer relying on C-Suite executives or diversity and inclusion officers to fix the culture at agencies. Instead, they are working together to push for change because they don’t believe it will happen without that. “If the agencies can’t figure it out the talent has to,” said Bennett, adding that much like the unionization push in recent years in publishing, agency talent has to “band together” to advocate for change. “It’s on the talent to start looking at adjacent industries to see what’s working.” 

Tried it before

The call to address racism and the need for more diversity and inclusion at agencies isn’t new. That said, much of the focus at agencies was in hiring diversity and inclusion officers to manage the issue without giving them the resources needed to make a dent in the problem, according to agency executives.  

“These efforts don’t make a difference because they rarely have the full weight of the company behind them,” said Lindsey Day Farrar, president and editor-in-chief of CrwnMag, a full-service creative shop that helps brands connect with Black women. “From where we sit, the D&I desk is where Black businesses are sent when the firm doesn’t want to do business, but does want cultural insights for free.” 

“The conversation is very old,” said Keni Thacker, founder of 100 Roses from Concrete, a network for men of color in advertising. “A lot of us have been trying to change the conversation. But still it seems like those things have been falling on deaf ears over the years. I want to see where we are a month from now, six months from now, a year from now.” 

While some Black agency employees worry that agencies won’t make a true commitment to change as they’ve tried to push for change before, others are more hopeful. “The pressure is on,” said A. Walton Smith, head of content and community engagement for freelance marketplace We Are Rosie. 

“It’s two weeks later and we’re still having this conversation,” Smith added. “Protests are still strong, so people are given strength to pursue getting answers from brands and agencies. This time feels different. People are really starting to hold brands and companies accountable. I’ve never seen it to this level.”

Pre-coronavirus, a U.S. hotel chain client of media agency The Media Kitchen used to target consumers with an intent to travel, no matter where in the world they were located. But with reopening dates dependent on local regulations, its return to market campaigns now are focused on people within a specific driving radius of its hotels.

Typically in the past, an ad from the chain promoting a staycation might have had a drive radius of around 200 miles. In these times — with many consumer leery of air travel — people are willing to drive further, said Brian Stern, group director at The Media Kitchen.

“The definition of local changes,” Stern said. 

Location-specific creative is also top of mind. 

“You don’t want advertisements showing people in a restaurant all together or a bunch of people floating in a pool together,” if the current rules in that location don’t allow for those types of activities, Stern said. “You have to be careful [with] imagery and show the reality of social distancing and what the regulations mandate.”

This all comes as local spot TV advertising is beginning to rebound, having fallen off dramatically in March, according to Nielsen. Overall, local spot TV ad units rose 5% the week commencing April 27. Ad units in 101 out of the top 132 television markets increased in that period. The biggest upswing was in Lansing, Mich., where local spot TV ad units increased 46% versus the week beginning March 30.

National advertisers have been using Pandora’s geotargeting options to tailor appropriate messaging to particular cities and states around the safety measures they are putting in place, said Leon VanGelder, vice president of small-to-medium businesses, local and inside sales advertising at Pandora in an email.

“For example, if you’re a shoe store and are slowly reopening as stay-at-home measures are lifted, your policy of removing shoes that have been tried on out of circulation for 48 hours would be a smart thing to tell customers so they can feel comfortable visiting your store and you can open yourself up to more potential business,” VanGelder said.

With the U.S. unemployment rate currently hovering around 13% and continued uncertainty about the future of the economy, certainly value is a key message to get across to consumers. Sparkfly, a tech platform that allows quick-service restaurants and retailers to manage and measure promotional campaigns and coupons, saw a 48% increase in promotion redemption on its platform since the lowest period of activity the week of March 4, 2020 as clients looked to drive customers back in store. 

“Companies are thinking about how to best leverage local programs to test the marketplace and understand the mindset of the consumer as they come back into stores before they run a full marketing campaign,” said Sparkfly founder Catherine Tabor. 

A renewed focus on local advertising comes at an important juncture for local news media, which was already under strain before the coronavirus crisis hit. More than 30 local U.S. newsrooms have closed since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Poynter, and there have been hundreds of layoffs and furloughs and other painful cost-cutting measures introduced across local titles.

This week, the Local Media Association and Local Media Consortium announced the Google News Initiative was funding a $15 million ad campaign encouraging readers and companies to “Support Local News” through advertising, subscriptions and donations. Together the two organizations represent more than 5,000 newspapers, TV stations, radio stations and digital outlets in the U.S. and Canada. 

Fran Wills, CEO of LMC, said the organization had also been working with advertising agency group the 4A’s and the Brand Safety Institute to encourage advertisers and buyers to add a trusted local news list to their target media to prevent local outlets feeling the pinch from overzealous keyword blocking. Coronavirus-related keyword blocking remained a problem for 43% of the 127 publishing executives surveyed by Digiday earlier this month.

“We are looking at how we can better support local media buying at scale,” said Wills. Measurement is “definitely one of the considerations as we look to make it easier for advertisers to not only buy local media but measure the effectiveness” of their campaigns, she added.

Some experts predict that the shift toward local advertising will linger beyond the initial reopening period — especially if there is a dreaded second wave of the virus and further localized lockdowns.

“From a marketing perspective, that starts to put more emphasis on the localization of messaging,” said Bernard Urban, CEO of Silverblade, a company that offers financing solutions to advertiser and media clients.

“Some of these super-empowered individuals are quite angry, some of them quite wonderful – but all of them are now able to act much more directly and much more powerfully on the world stage,” Friedman wrote.

The rise of super-empowered individuals is more pronounced in younger generations, from Malala Yousafzai to Greta Thunberg. Such super-empowered individuals, in the midst of no less than three intertwined crises — health (coronavirus), economic (worst downturn in generations) and social (systemic injustice) — are rising within media organizations. And they will likely change them for good — and for the better.

What I’ve seen in the past three months is groups of people fleeing to opposite poles. There are the V-shaped recovery types who see coronavirus fading, positive signs on the economy and the understanding that for all the unrest, we tend to muddle through unchanged. And there are those who see this time as a defining moment of pain, unnecessary death and dislocation that cannot go for waste in going back to how things were. These people, often but not always young, are not impatient, they’re mad. They don’t believe in leadership to fix these issues that have gone ignored for some time. And yes, they bring their “full selves” to work.

This is happening across media companies right now — and it is overdue. Staff revolts are spreading. The New York Times’ rank and file rose up to force the resignation of James Bennet for publishing an opinion piece from Sen. Tom Cotton calling for a militarized response to protests and disorder. At Conde Nast, Bon Appetit’s editor-in-chief Adam Rappaport quit after a photo of him in brownface at a costume party circulated Twitter and staffers detailed systematic inequality in how people of color and white talent are compensated. What was remarkable is Rappaport didn’t last a day. Refinery29 editor Christine Barberich resigned after former employees came forward with examples of racial discrimination. Super-empowered individuals are even taking on the copy desk. At the Los Angeles Times, staff led the pressure to change house style from lowercasing black to uppercase to recognize Black as a distinct ethnic group with shared experiences and identity.

These staff revolts are likely to continue. Younger employees are simply not going to wait patiently for change. They’re going to force change on  management they often feel are out of touch. Look at the NFL. For years, management refused to listen to players and embrace their peaceful protests of police brutality. Finally, in the wake of the Floyd protest, Bryndon Minter, a video producer, took it upon himself to organize a powerful video from players demanding change. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell largely acceded to those demands with his own video plainly stating “black lives matter.” (Goodell did fail to apologize to Colin Kaepernick, or explicitly endorse the right to kneel during the national anthem.)

The role of unions in digital media is a hot-button topic. Most executives I speak to are horrified by the notion, rolling their eyes at the idea of yet another layer slowing down needed business changes. But the unionization that’s swept through digital media is a symptom. The root cause of this organization is a lack of trust from rank and file that leadership will make the right choices. For a while, I thought this influx of the super-empowered individuals would fade once the unemployment rate ticked up. I was being cynical. I saw a tight labor market giving more leverage to the employee side of the equation. Well, the unemployment rate is over 15% now, with layoffs sweeping media organizations left and right, but the bottom-up demands for change have not gone away. In fact, they’ve grown louder.

Overall, I see this as a positive, if messy, change. The truth is, in the midst of George Floyd’s killing spotlighting systemic inequality, media has come up distressingly short in putting actions to their words around equality and opportunity. This week, I did a podcast with Lindsay People’s Wagner, a 29-year-old Black woman who is the editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue. She grew up in Wisconsin, attended a small school in Indiana and worked her way up from an internship while juggling jobs on the side, including one dressing mannequins at DKNY. She readily admits her path is not for everyone — or should be.

The bottom-up revolt happening now is going to hold media organizations accountable for backing up their Instagram images and declarations of support with real action in remaking their own houses. Change starts from within. And executives would be wise to listen to — and act on — the super-empowered individuals in their organizations. Many may want things to snap back to “normal,” but the rank-and-file aren’t going to let that happen.