The argument for diversity has been dining out for a long time now, with a lot of fat being chewed but no one quite swallowing. That is until a couple of big spenders, HP and General Mills, upped the ante with the threat of not spending their money with agencies that don’t match their racial and gender quotas.
Like many people, I’m a little perplexed with how I feel about this move. Part of me applauds the action, and part of me feels aggrieved. As an agency owner, I’ve always known that we have to acquiesce to the bottom line, but a client threatening to use their purse strings to garrotte an agency has never been so blatant.
So the agency of the future (or ‘fit for purpose’ as Omnicom would have us believe) is going to have a creative department that is half filled with women and at least 20% of the agency is going to be people of colour (a General Mills request according to Adage).
Agencies are missing out on so much more talent because the mindset is still that graduates are the panacea to industry skills.
But what about college leavers, returning mothers, career changers? We certainly have to make our industry more rather than less appealing if we are going to widen the potential talent pool.
The interesting point that also hit me, was the fact a client business felt the need to get involved in how creative agencies ran or at least staffed up. Does an agency need passive aggressive threats to change (maybe), or does it need the industry as a whole to be more open to change? After all, it’s nigh-on impossible to be a round peg if a brand’s marketing criteria only has square holes.
Making change is tough, hence the reaction of two businesses who have tired of agency malaise. And the debate around the agency of the future has been waged far and wide, with gender and race being just a couple from many issues facing us today. The press want change because it makes the industry interesting. Creative agencies want change because without it our future is becoming less and less clear. And brands want agencies to change because? Well, according to different articles, there’s a list as long as your arm from building more trust to being ‘even’ more competitive.
But for agencies to really change, and not just our rhetoric, we need companies to change their mindset and the way they work with agencies.
The same can be said of the media. You can’t keep lions in a sheep pen. In fact, the kind of changes that we all talk about need to be industry-wide (including the media) and not just agency.
For starters, the immediate need for putting agencies in boxes should be flatpacked and taken away. If agencies are going to be different and do different things, then they can’t be expected to compromise to a tick list of tradition.
Structures have to be changed and barriers pulled down. ‘One size fits all’ procurement policies should be dismantled and rebuilt in line to fit the objectives. I speak to procurement so I know they’re not naive or ignorant to the needs of the agencies. Most are just hamstrung by a broader company ruling. Procurement based on value and not savings would create much better conversations and stronger relationships.
Transparency shouldn’t be a one-way mirror. The ongoing problems of PBR is a case in point. Claire Beale called for small agencies to be brave, and she’s right. Or at least right up to the point some of those agencies start going to the wall. Marketing spend can sometimes be too transient. Belts have to be tightened at times in every business, but not to a point that it’s the agency that’s out of pocket, even though it’s successfully completed the work.
So where next? Do I like quotas over talent? Clearly not. Have agencies done enough (or some may argue anything) in regards to gender, race and the class divide? The fact that it’s a debate and not a memory gives us all the answers we need. But is it enough for change just to be an agency problem?
Does having big budgets (in this day and age) allow brands to wipe their hands of all the issues and make agencies solely responsible for them? Change is an industry problem and the responsibility lies with everyone from the trade press to clients.
