Month: November 2021

Indeed, the rise of the metaverse has led to an influx of companies looking to pick up advertising dollars from brands trying to jump into the latest trend. It’s more important than ever for brands to identify those that have been operating in virtual environments for more than a few hype cycles — and how to leverage their expertise to reach virtual consumers. 

The contenders

Games and social media are two pre-existing facets of culture and tech that may evolve into the first true metaverse. There is also a growing third faction: dedicated metaverse platforms such as Decentraland or Topia, which exist solely to building and inhabit virtual worlds.

Gaming platforms are currently best-equipped to help brands enter the metaverse, in large part because they come with a pre-existing and loyal user base that is already accustomed to consuming in virtual space, according to several experts. “Are those young adults really going to be excited about Facebook’s new metaverse company?” said Jason Mitchell, CEO of the social media agency Movement Strategy. “If the metaverse was totally new and unique, maybe. But they’re already on Roblox and Fortnite.”

There’s also the fact that Facebook, which has recently been under the gun for a litany of scandals, has banked up much less consumer goodwill than video game companies such as Roblox and Epic. Many Gen-Zers simply assume that Facebook’s metaverse will be a dystopia. “For Facebook, they will be very cautious to build metaverse experiences that are polluted, so to speak, with advertisements,” said Doron Nir, CEO of livestreaming tools and services provider StreamElements. “Because of the legacy of the company, it’s more likely that they will relinquish the ad revenue that can come from that until it has a really significant critical mass of users.”

On the other hand, brand partnerships — including those of the garish, in-your-face variety — are a regular and accepted occurrence in game-based metaverse platforms. Fortnite is notorious for featuring in-game skins and items modeled after popular intellectual properties such as Marvel and Star Wars, and Roblox has become increasingly involved in brand partnerships such as its “Vans World,” a permanent, custom-coded virtual space dedicated to the popular apparel brand. This pre-existing framework of in-game advertisements could easily be adjusted to create “in-metaverse” ads. “We’ve built basically what the stack should be to advertise in the metaverse,” said Samuel Huber, CEO of the in-game advertising firm Admix. “If you think backwards and think, ‘okay, what are brands going to need?’, whether it’s the metaverse or the web, they need the ability to reach the right user at the right time, and to integrate creatives they have created and measure success. Well, that’s basically a DSP [demand-side platform], but tailored for the metaverse.”

The brand side

While brands would be wise to view metaverse platforms with a discerning eye, metaverse platforms should also carefully consider the brands with which they partner. Not every product or service is a good fit for virtual consumption; while it’s well and good for State Farm to have an office in Decentraland, it would be a challenge for the company to sell “virtual insurance” to an informed consumer.

The persistence of one’s online identity across platforms is a hallmark of the metaverse. As a result, the brands and products that consumers are most likely to purchase virtually are those that engage with users’ appearance or identity, according to Liam Osbourne, a global client partner at FLUX, the fashion and luxury brand department of the digital marketing and advertising services firm Media.Monks. “Fashion has always been used as a building block of identity, so what you wear says something about you, as a person in the real world,” Osbourne said. “As we’re seeing things get more advanced digitally, it’s only natural that your avatar or virtual version of you gets given the same level of importance and attention.”

This explains why fashion and beauty companies have been leading the charge for non-gaming-endemic brands in the metaverse. Global apparel companies such as Nike and Balenciaga, for example, have partnered with Epic Games to bring their virtualized products into Fortnite, with the former hiring a dedicated virtual design team and filing trademark applications for downloadable digital goods featuring its swoosh logo. “With virtual worlds being richer, you are allowed to experiment and play with makeup or clothes in a way that you couldn’t do — or afford to do — in the real world,” Osbourne said.

This doesn’t mean that only brands that engage with consumers’ appearance should be interested in activating virtually. The rise of American consumer culture, which elevates one’s purchases and preferences as a marker of personal identity, lines up well with the advent of the metaverse. “It certainly precedes ideas of the metaverse, or even the internet, but it has to do with the rise of lifestyle brands,” said Frank Rose, a tech and storytelling expert and author of The Sea We Swim In and The Art of Immersion. “And lifestyle brands can be almost anything; we think of them as, maybe, fancy liquor, or a clothing brand — but Harley Davidson is nothing if not a lifestyle brand.” 

As consumers become more comfortable owning property that exists independently of their avatars — vehicles, houses and the like — they will tie these purchases to their identities as well, giving inherent value to the concept of virtual ownership. The success of fashion and beauty companies in selling non-fungible tokens and other virtual goods provides a preview of how a more fleshed-out virtual economy might look.

Whether brands use the metaverse to sell virtual or physical goods, the very nature of advertising will change as people become attuned to virtual space. Roblox describes its brand partnerships as “shared experiences” rather than advertisements, stressing that the interactivity of its digital environment turns the brand–consumer relationship into a two-way street. Once denizens of the metaverse are used to more interactive brand experiences, the billboards of the physical world — and even the banner ads of the traditional internet — might start to feel flat in comparison. “Our team specifically targets who is going to be that brand that the audience really wants to engage with,” said Christina Wootton, vp of brand partnerships at Roblox. “They’re really excited about it, it elevates their experience on the platform.”

E-commerce opportunities

Until consumers fully come around to the idea of virtual ownership, brands of all kinds can give value to their digital products by pairing them with physical goods. Roblox’s “Vans World,” for example, features a range of digital items, such as skateboards and T-shirts, that are identical to those sold in brick-and-mortar Vans stores. “It’s actually a platform that is one-for-one, the same platform, the same experience,” said Nick Street, vp of global integrated marketing at Vans. “You can actually order that shoe in real life, and you can put your own design on it.”

The in-game store in Vans World and the Vans e-commerce shop are currently separate; Roblox is a COPPA-compliant platform, so it is impossible for users to navigate out-of-game by clicking on an in-game object. But the pairing of virtual goods with physical merchandise is part of the road map for most, if not, all, metaverse platforms: for example, the worlds of Stageverse, the concert-based platform, include dedicated areas for merch sales. “There are a couple of attributes that will make digital goods particularly valuable,” said TJ Leonard, CEO of the stock media platform Storyblocks. “The ones that are able to bridge between the virtual and the physical world will just necessarily carry more value.” Platforms such as Monaco Market are betting that this kind of physical–virtual pairing will become more widespread as the metaversal economy takes shape, creating dedicated NFTs paired with real-life collectibles such as sneakers and baseball cards.

The metaverse is young, thus far more of a novelty than a truly useful tool. But as consumer behaviors shift due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a new generation of digital natives grows up in video games, the metaverse is inevitable — it is an evolution of the modern internet, not a replacement for it. With user-generated content gaining prominence and users gravitating toward game-based platforms, “anyone who is creating an entertainment product on the internet is participating in the metaverse,” according to Steven Salz, CEO of the esports betting firm Rivalry. 

Ultimately, Salz said, those who benefit most from the growing metaverse won’t be the brands or the platforms that experiment with virtual space as it becomes mainstream: they will be the same beneficiaries who gained most from the video-game boom. Whether users are playing, working or purchasing products in the metaverse, everyone — players, brands and platforms alike — will need plenty of hardware to keep it all running. “If there’s going to be a winner, it’s going to be people that do graphics cards, like NVIDIA — and people who do raw GPU and CPU power are going to be the winners of this thing, like they always are,” Salz said. “And then it’s also going to be people that do game engines: Unreal and Unity will probably find success in this thing.”

“She just blew the doors off of the whole conference,” said Stacy Minero, global head of Twitter ArtHouse, the division that works with brand marketers, who was connected to Digiday by Twitter to speak on behalf of the company. “She really comes from this place of advocacy and activism in a very purpose-driven way.”

With that presentation, the now-36-year-old, Bronx-bred Rivera had turned heads, including those of Twitter leadership, landing her in her current role as global director of culture and community, where she focuses on building real-world relationships between historically marginalized communities on Twitter and in media and advertising. “We’re talking about groups that have been historically excluded from a number of different parts of the process when it comes to media, advertising and the representation therein,” Rivera said.

Since stepping into her role in 2018, Rivera has worked to beef up Twitter’s culture community team by bringing in senior manager Olubunkola “Bukky” Ojeifo and art curator Ariel Adkins. It’s a team that works across the company to integrate diverse voices into the fabric of how Twitter works by partnering with Twitter’s enforcement group, research arm, ad business and customers, per Rivera.

Since its inception, the team has rolled out several initiatives to give influential voices a platform, like #TwitterVoices, a regular event series that personally connects influential diverse users to one another as well as to Twitter leadership — or as Rivera calls it, “breaking bread.” There’s also #TwitterPrism, a tool to help advertising partners develop more inclusive marketing strategies.

Rivera’s team’s latest project is one that has yet to be formally announced, but the team has quietly started rolling out a new creator program, Voices X, which connects diverse and influential voices on Twitter with paid opportunities to collaborate and co-create with brands. That new program could mean those users create content with those brands or partner with them to amplify messaging. The team is also exploring ways to push influential voices on the platform to be brand strategy consultants, she said.

The team’s work came to a fever pitch in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, solidifying the importance of Rivera and her team. At the time, tweets around the Black Lives Matter movement took off, racking up more than 390 million tweets about the topic. And at one point, more than 200 tweets per second, she said. In response, Rivera’s team and Twitter moved to bolster marginalized voices, launching a multi-city out-of-home campaign to further support those voices.

For Rivera, all of these initiatives are Twitter’s way of putting its money where its mouth is, a goal of the director’s since she started.

“If I had to circle one goal when I walked in the door at Twitter, it was that I have to build trust with historically marginalized groups that utilize Twitter,” she said.

Creators from marginalized communities have long since sounded the alarm for credited work, acknowledgement and equal opportunities. For example, consider Twitter moments like the Zola story, #BlackLivesMatter, ​​#OscarsSoWhite and Popeyes’ viral chicken sandwich, which all became cultural phenomenons. 

“We know Black people, Black culture drives overall culture,” said Jamira Burley, social activist and director of social impact projects North America for Adidas, who Twitter pointed to for this article. 

For many of those voices, Twitter was a safe place, a level playing field wherein they could air grievances in 280 characters or less. With that, Rivera is making it her job to bolster those voices, offering support and monetization, especially as the creator economy heats up. Prior to Rivera’s efforts, marginalized communities on Twitter talked amongst themselves, leveraging the platform to share common experiences and raise awareness, per Burley. In her role at Twitter, Rivera facilitated a lot of those conversations between the platform itself, advertisers and Twitter voices, and created an open door policy for folks who had grievances or recommendations for improvements, per Burley.

“That helped us to feel like there was somebody working within the organization that looked like us. They cared about our issues and understood where we were coming from,” Burley said. “It wasn’t just placating to the Black experience, but it was actually making an investment in a really in an authentic way.” 

What makes Rivera good at her job is her ability to leverage her own life experiences as a Black woman, Twitter user and advertising professional to serve as a liaison between those communities, said Kai Deveraux Lawson, svp of diversity, equity and inclusion at Dentsu creative Americas, Dentsu International. Put simply, Rivera humanizes Twitter for those historically marginalized users.

“Part of what God-is has done is elevated the communities and the importance of conversation happening on the platform,” she said. “I think she’s been able to do that because of how she’s walked through the world.”

Still, Rivera is just getting started. Currently, there are plans to expand the culture and community team, per the director. Recently, they’ve welcomed the team’s first senior manager of strategy and operations to bring structure, operations and marketing experience around the Voices X work, which is expected to be available to a broader user base in the coming weeks.

“We continue to try and put our money where our mouth is, and hold ourselves accountable for investing in these communities,” Rivera said. “I can’t tell somebody else to do it and we’re not doing it.”

“I have the greatest respect for Daryl and what he’s achieved,” said Adamski, 44, who himself is a 25-year veteran of the company, having cut his teeth at OMD in his native Germany. “I pointed out he’s way too humble in what he had achieved in his role. When he joined in 1998, we were a random selection of odd media agency brands scattered throughout the world.”

Adamski recently settled in the New York area, from where he will oversee 18,000 OMG personnel in 100 markets. Since about 55 percent of OMG’s business is North American-based, it made sense for him to settle stateside. The following is an edited conversation with Adamski, who hit on several topics affecting the agency world. 

Local/regional vs global

I just met with Annalect, and we talked about 2022. I was very clear that the global center has one purpose only:  to be in service of the markets. We need to create product that is actually relevant in the given market, something that’s tangible, real and people can log onto — not just a nice powerpoint deck. I probe them for whether they’re locally applicable. Coming from a market where I worked 20 years of my life [Germany] very much grounds me in the fact that, when global people show up, I get nervous. They will tell me what they think is right, show me a lot of PowerPoints, then they leave. 

The first thing I did when I was on the [global] OMD journey [in 2017] was deep dives with all the local markets. We identified the common themes, issues and challenges around the world. We then aligned our principles around that, and identified a number of opportunities and initiatives to address these issues. I intend to do the same thing yet again — making sure the [global] output is in service of the markets, not the other way around. 

Prioritizing challenges and opportunities

I think of this time as the great reimagining. There’s more things to choose from and more channels than ever, with a lot less available attention. The initiatives [OMG has undertaken] are fantastic examples and embodiments of a way to quickly react and adapt and be responsive in almost real time to the challenges that a dramatically changed marketplace is posing. One of my first mentors said to me, “To really make a difference when looking at your competitor, you will have to learn fast in order to act faster.” These initiatives are that type of response. And I believe especially in the U.S., where [OMG North American CEO] Scott Hagedorn has led and spearheaded many of these initiatives, we’ll be seeing more of them. We’ll make sure these initiatives find global resonance, and that as we create new product we’ll listen to market demands.

The importance of attention

Attention planning is going to be the next big thing for us at an OMG level. There’s a lot of chatter around attention planning. A lot of people don’t realize is it’s an actual tool or weapon as the cookie crumbles. We need different ways of understanding and looking at the context we put our ad dollars in. We need a better way of understanding how consumers react to certain formats, platforms and devices. So attention planning is going to be one of our core initiatives going forward, and we need to redefine the outcomes of what we do.

Why in-housing is a good thing for agencies

I love in-housing and am a huge fan. Because what it does is it keeps us on our toes. We need to prove and give evidence to why we’re still relevant in this market. If clients can do it themselves, there’s no need for agencies. So we’ll see more nuanced and flexible ways an agency collaborates and partners with a brand. Because in-housing is not a thing in itself. There are a million shades of grey. As companies run through their digital transformation programs, the way of working between an agency and client will change over and over again.

Color by numbers

Ever heard of Buy Now Pay Later? It’s essentially the millennial version of a layaway plan. Fintech company GoCardless recently surveyed users in advance of the holiday season, arguably the first with BNPL as a real option. According to the study:

• 42% of shoppers plan to use BNPL for holiday shopping, a number that grows to 60% among millennials
• 39% of respondents chose clothing as the most popular item for BNPL, followed by computers and laptops (33%) and games consoles such as the PlayStation and Xbox (32%) 
• One-third (32%) of respondents expressed a willingness to spend up to $99 more if BNPL was available, while 26% said they would spend as much as $200 more. 
• But here’s the problem with BNPL: Nearly half (46%) of respondents said it’s difficult to keep track of how many plans they have open, while 58% said they would need to check their accounts to work out how much money they owe, as opposed to estimating off the top of their head. Among millennials, that surges to 78%. (BNPLs generally do not charge interest, but late fees can be hefty.)

Takeoff & landing

• Havas Media Group, which has been hiring and promoting lots of executives recently under new North American CEO Greg Walsh, promoted Meghan Grant from chief strategy officer to president of Havas Media Group U.S. and chief client experience officer for North America, reporting to Walsh.
• Live-sports streaming platform Fubo TV announced it has integrated data derived from its ad inventory into Dentsu’s M1 data platform to generate more addressable and targeted campaigns. 
• Network and sales platform Famecast said it’s formed a strategic partnership with HipHopTV to let hip-hop artists create their own branded channels to connect with their fans, not too unlike an OnlyFans. They’ve also launched HipHopTV.com, a web platform that lets artists manage their own social platforms. 

Direct quote

“In 2022, across all categories, there will be more greenwashing than ever before. Brands are listening to the consumer demand for sustainable products, but many are taking the easy way out by altering their messaging rather than revamping their entire operations … Simultaneously, new emerging conscious companies will build their foundational practices with sustainability in mind. We’ll see more and more newer companies certifying as B-corps. As shopping continues to shift to digital (expedited by the pandemic), online shoppers will champion social justice, ethics, and sustainability efforts —louder than ever before. “Biodegradable” and “compostable” claims will appear in more and more consumer products.”

—Jaclyn Tracy, founder and CEO of Sistain, an online healthy, beauty and fashion site focused on sustainable products, predicting consumer trends for 2022.

Speed reading

• I checked in with media agency executives who did NOT win Meta/Facebook’s business, who relayed their relief, as well as their other clients’ relief at how it all panned out with Publicis’ Spark Foundry winning the billion-dollar business. 
• Check out Digiday’s comprehensive guide to third-party cookie alternatives out there, as well as the pros and cons for publishers. 
• This story and chart from eMarketer notes that for the first time in Meta/Facebook’s history, Instagram will generate more than 50% of the parent company’s ad revenue.

Calling employee tracking “a form of micromanagement,” he said: “I understand that counting the number of hours spent on each project is vital to calculating the budget and workforce. Indeed, it allows making better future estimations on how much projects cost. However, I don’t see the point of writing down the details of each activity every day. It’s all redundant with the daily meeting where we report our progress and issues.”

Ultimately, such exhaustive accounting of one’s activities “makes me feel like a 10-year-old reporting to the teacher,” Chung-Sao added. “I don’t feel trusted by my management.”

Even as employees feeling supported by their bosses has become a touchpoint during the pandemic and as the issue of individual privacy remains on the front burner, companies using assorted monitoring techniques, including tracking software, to keep track of what their employees are up to has caught on as more of us are working remotely. 

A recent survey of 1,200 employers in the U.S. by Digital.com found that six in 10 companies use monitoring software to “track employee activity and productivity.” The survey also revealed that among employees who were being monitored, 53% were spending as many as three hours per day on nonwork activities, and 88% of companies had terminated workers after employing tracking techniques. 

A further 81% companies reported an increase in employee productivity after tracking was introduced.

Companies following their employees’ activity argue that it is essential to understand how their people are spending their work days and to ensure that hours are being properly accounted for. Catherine vanVonno, president and CEO of 20Four7VA, a Maryland-based remote staffing firm that specializes in placing virtual assistants, found, for example, that many of its employees would work on weekends and holidays without logging their time. “Tracking how much time is being billed to clients means we can bill them more accurately and provide better service because we have a better idea of what’s going on at any given moment,” she said. This transparency helps both the company and the employee because the software also records progress towards goals, showing whether deadlines will be met, she claimed.

Tracking workers’ activity can also serve as a valuable tool for employees as they work to improve their performance and manage their workflow, vanVonno added. 

When it comes to observing employees via monitoring software, most employers believe it is vital to let people know they are being observed, though some companies are more transparent than others about it. While the large majority (86%) loop in their employees, 14% do not, according to the Digital.com report. 

“It’s important for organizations to be clear about their intentions when using employee-monitoring tools,” said Ed Cravo, cofounder and head of marketing at the Chicago-based real estate investment platform Groundbreaker. An employer is generally within its rights to monitor employee phone calls, internet usage and email — after all, doing so can offer insights into better ways to run the day-to-day business, Cravo noted. But there are other benefits, he added — such as a company protecting itself against lawsuits and malicious cyber activity and guarding its intellectual property. 

Meanwhile, when it comes to monitoring employees, companies would seem to have the law on their side. “As a legal matter, employers have little to worry about in regard to employee privacy, so long as they give employees a heads up that they are subject to monitoring,” said employment lawyer Mark Kluger of the New Jersey firm Kluger Healey. Plus, monitoring workers is nothing new — employers have for years tracked their “road warrior” employees using GPS technology, while keystroke tracking of remote employees is also well-established, according to Kluger.

Apparently, certain industries are more apt to monitor their people than others. In fields where clients tend to get billed by the hour, monitoring was most common, according to the Digital.com survey. Advertising and marketing firms accounted for the most monitoring activity among companies polled, followed by computer and IT businesses. 

Despite that, many ad agencies insist that they do not follow their people’s every move. While those that don’t are eager to talk about why. Jonathan Schoenberg, executive creative director and partner of the indy agency TDA Boulder in Colorado — even called monitoring technology “insulting” and “gross.”

“Working remotely comes with its own set of challenges and tracking software feels like your boss is looking over your shoulder every single moment,” said Schoenberg, whose agency does work for Patagonia and Justin’s. “We want our people to be excited to work, excited to log on and be productive and creative.” 

During the pandemic, as remote work has become the norm, the Chicago agency Two by Four hasn’t questioned how its people get their work done — they get it done, and that’s what matters. “We’ve always valued individuality and talent, especially in a creative business,” said Jessica Romaniuk, president of the firm, which counts Coca-Cola and Hilton as clients. “Our people need time and space to refresh and regroup. I can’t imagine tracking every single click — it feels so invasive. I trust our people and see what they deliver every single day.”

Jen Daly, svp of people at The Marketing Arm, a Dallas-based agency that has done work for brands ranging from Hasbro to Harley-Davidson, added: “At TMA, hours are self-reported. We also give our employees near-total flexibility about when and where they work, because we believe it’s the quality of their output that matters.”

In a job market defined by The Great Resignation, where job seekers have the upper hand, employers would do well to tread lightly when it comes to monitoring workers. 

“Employees don’t want to feel like machines,” said Theresa Balsiger, vp of candidate relations at the Wisconsin-based talent acquisition firm Carex Consulting Group. “If you provide employees with goals, targets, and hold them accountable, you’re still able to track performance, but it’s going to be a much more collaborative, positive result. You’ll be able to recruit and retain staff far easier.”

Pointing to the numerous downsides of monitoring — among them, that productivity, culture and innovation all take a hit amid an atmosphere of surveillance — bosses seeking accountability from their people “need to look beyond the minutiae and keep their eyes on the prize,” said Christy Pruitt-Haynes, HR consultant at New York business consultancy NeuroLeadership Institute. 

“When employees feel supported, not micromanaged, it sends a signal of trust and worthiness,” she said. “When managers and employees all get to feel secure and valued, the culture will thrive.”

3 Questions with Kathleen Saxton, md and evp, EMEA, Medialink

What’s a big issue agency CEOs should be mindful of going into 2022?
Through our own research and discussions with clients, we’re seeing what we call “air pocketing.” It’s what happens when senior people in organizations, who aren’t CEOs, get stuck in a rut. They’re too good to let go of, and there’s nowhere for them to go. So they’re stuck in this place where they’re paid a lot of money, but are frustrated with their day-to-day. It’s a ticking time bomb. So, there could be a brilliant global account director who has the ability to really transform a business but because they’ve never run a region before they will likely get overlooked for the next CEO role. Eventually, these people will act on those frustrations. Money isn’t as important as it once was to them so they may decide to do something more entrepreneurial rather than pocket more money but get air pocketed for the next four years. They want adventure. Not only did the pandemic give a lot of people a chance to stop and think about the future, but also that they can live on a lot less in this new world.

CEOs talk about the value they place on a strong culture and yet there are so many reports in the press that undermine those claims. Are CEOs aware of this?
CEOs are aware of it. The shift that hasn’t happened enough is whether these issues are taken out of HR or culture departments and brought into general management. These issues are discussed at board meetings but is that management level going to put money behind efforts to tackle these issues or are they just going to shuffle people out on stage to talk about it? That said, CEOs do seem more aware than ever that it’s something they need to address. But I don’t think they’ve fully understood yet the long-term impact of what has happened over the last year. Whether it’s loneliness, mental or physical health, there are so many ways this crisis has hurt people and changed those who are coming back to the office. A CEO has to try and accommodate that but also be pragmatic about whether it’s possible to accommodate everyone. There has to be some level of policy. That’s why you’re seeing so many staff surveys. They must try and find a consensus of the majority to help the business get back on its feet.

Do agency CEOs lack empathy for their teams?
I don’t think CEOs have a lack of empathy. A lot of problems come down to the fear many of those execs have of being taken advantage of … and then on the other side it’s pressure from their own organization to listen to the needs of as many people as possible. Trying to reconcile those two points is key. — Seb Joseph.

By the numbers

• 57% of 117 CEOs interviewed across 15 industries, ranked attracting and retaining talent as their top organizational challenge.
  [Source of data: Deloitte and Fortune CEO survey.]

• 75% of U.K. organizations say they have employees who are reluctant to return to the workplace.
  [Source of data: XpertHR’s The Future of the Workplace report.]
•  94% of 250 organizers polled are planning a virtual event in 2022, and 48% are planning more virtual events in 2022 than in 2021.
  [Source of data: Kaltura’s The State of Virtual Events 2022 report.]

What else we’ve covered

• In latest edition of our Confessions series, a communications specialist of color talks about frustrations around stagnant diversity initiatives, weaponized incompetence and a lack of intersectionality.

• You might think the massive switch to working from home during the pandemic would make business suits a less profitable sector of the fashion industry. But for e-commerce- and style-savvy companies, the opposite has happened. Demand has actually gone up – and “oversized and boxy styles are proving to be popular,” according to fashion experts.
• We took a tour inside ad agency Mother’s newly built New York headquarters, designed with post-pandemic must-haves like collaboration and huddle areas and no fixed desks at its heart.

This newsletter is edited by Jessica Davies, managing editor, Future of Work.