Month: December 2020

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Are agencies still in planning mode when it comes to fixing DE&I issues?

Agencies are still rolling out a lot of longer term plans when it comes to how they will change, which I think is a lot of bullshit. How does it take six months for you to fix your hiring practices or fix your diversity and inclusion issues?

My agency, for example, never released our diversity numbers. It became a long term plan where they brought in a consulting group. It’s weird — we’ve been talking about making plans or making actual steps to bring in minorities since June. But then it wasn’t until the fall that they brought people in to have actual conversations. So I think agencies are going at their own pace.

Do you think agencies are actually committed to change?

I am still hopeful. I do see agencies hiring. But then I also see situations, like at my agency, where you can tell there’s a lot of posturing, a lot of straight faced lies where people are saying they do care and want to make the workplace equitable for everybody, but they are just saying what they believe people want to hear. In reality, they don’t really want to change it or don’t believe they need to change the internal agency culture.

Why do you say that?

This isn’t just about hiring. It’s also about the culture inside of agencies. There are a lot of agencies that are not minority friendly and when they do have minority employees it’s a certain style of minority. There’s this model minority thing that happens where if you’re not the type of Asian person they hire, then they won’t hire you or if you’re not the type of Black person they hire, then they’re not going to hire you. I feel like you can tell that agencies want to maintain their agency culture — they’ve created legacies off of toxic environments.

Much of the focus has been on adding more Black employees rather than trying to retain the Black talent agencies already have. Do you think that’s part of the problem?

Yeah, totally. It’s a problem. I had a conversation with my agency HR about bias I’ve experienced at my own agency and I told them that before they started to look around to bring in Black and Brown people they should do something about the internal culture. I’ve been interviewing at a few different agencies, too. What you’ll notice is that a lot of agencies are not changing their hiring practices. They’re talking to minorities, but not changing what they expect from minorities. I feel like nothing is going to change internally until they change the people that are handling it.

What do you wish agencies would actually change?

Agency leadership need to become diversity leaders [rather than relegating the duties to one person via the chief diversity officer role.] Hiring someone to do your job for you doesn’t show that you care about the job [of making your agency diverse and inclusive]. What needs to happen is that the HR heads, the CEOs, CCOs, they all need to speak up for diversity and train themselves on diversity and inclusion mandates. The creative department is the heart of the agency. Until the people who run the creative department actually care about it, the diversity conversation isn’t going to move forward. People will commit money, some people will give grants but I don’t see how that will actually push the conversation forward.

Digiday surveyed 60 publisher professionals and 52 agency professionals in early December, asking them about everything from their outlook on 2021 to how coronavirus affected the headcounts at their organizations.

The survey found that more than half of publishers — 53% — said that they’d increased the number of ad products offered since the start of 2020. Slightly more than a third said that the number had not changed, and the rest said either that they’d decreased the number or weren’t sure.

Much of this innovation came from publisher scrambling. The coronavirus pandemic forced publishers to get creative in order to hold onto client budgets, especially those that had planned sponsorships around live events.

It also squeezed the amount of money that brands were willing to spend trying out non-traditional or experimental ad formats, especially those designed to help with branding objectives; new units designed to drive sales or other bottom-funnel metrics were less affected, agency sources said.

Among agencies, the share that increased the number of services offered was slightly lower, but still close to half: 47%. A nearly identical share said the number of services their agency offered had not changed. Notably, 12% of agencies said that the number of services they offered increased “significantly,” a higher percentage than the amount of agencies that decreased the services they offered.

The addition of new services could by a byproduct of the consolidation squeezing the agency world. As the onset of the pandemic forced many marketers to cut costs, many responded by at least exploring the possibility of reducing the number of agencies they use. Creative agencies, in particular, appear poised for further consolidation.

In this week’s episode of the Digiday Podcast, our editorial team takes a look ahead at what 2021 may have in store for the publishing and marketing industries, from what Zoom fatigue means for the virtual conference to why perks aren’t what they used to be.

Here are highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity.

On balance, a tough year

Sara Jerde, managing editor: “In mid-March, when the coronavirus started spreading throughout the United States and [publishers] had to pivot their business models, [we saw] the effect in advertising in Q2, and then a lot of them having the books balanced by the end of the year. So I think something that’ll be on the top of minds of a lot of publishers going into next year is what cash flow really looks like. It’s going to be really crucial as we move into 2021 to see what sort of revenue opportunities they see, especially as it doesn’t look like we’re going to be seeing any sort of relief from this pandemic anytime soon.”

Zoom day, or beach day?

Max Willens, senior editor/research/features: “I think what’s really fascinating is the question of what endures when it comes to events. If you’re in the B2B space, it’s kind of easy to imagine a world where there’s a conference that you probably should attend for your job, but that maybe your company doesn’t want to shell out for a plane ticket, or you’ve got a million things going on. There’s a world in which it’s very easy to imagine attending it virtually in your pajamas, or while you’re at your desk. But I’m frankly, a lot more bearish on the B2C version of that enduring. You talk to publishers that stood up virtual B2C events this year and they all seem to really think that there’s traction there, and that there’s going to be an appetite for people to continue to watch a Zoom version of an event. They’re closer to this than I am, but thinking about it purely from an anecdotal perspective, once the people in my life are vaccinated and safe, and it’s warm outside, I’m not spending a second longer in [front of the] computer that I have to.”

That’s money

Kristina Monllos, senior marketing editor: “With everyone working from home, a cool culture — or what was once deemed cool — doesn’t matter anymore. If you’re just like sitting in front of your computer doing your job… if your job sucks, your job sucks. You’re not hanging out with your co-workers who you love being around. No one really wants to hop on a Zoom happy hour (and if you do, I want to know why!). The stuff that would retain people before isn’t really going to work and the stuff that will retain them now costs money. A stipend for someone to make a home office? That’s money. Better benefits? That’s money. But these are the things that I’m hearing from agency employees. That’s what they want.”

Short-term planning – in a good way

Seb Joseph, senior news editor: “We probably need to address the myth of annual or long-term planning cycles. The concept where you plan and just watch the year go by isn’t very common anymore. For the past five years, brands have become nimbler and the planning cycles have gotten shorter and shorter. I would be speaking to certain buyers and they were saying that they’ve instilled in their teams that three months is kind of long term. The business cycle evolves and you have to constantly assess it. So while the pandemic has been disruptive, it hasn’t necessarily impacted the actual planning cycle for the most part — agencies, advertisers continue to count on the quarterly basis or at least on a sort of campaign-by-campaign basis depending on the sector and the advertiser.”