Do you remember the brilliant baptism scene at the end of “The Godfather”? For my money, the genius intercutting makes for the best-edited montage in film history. In an almost feverishly
rich and thrilling way, director Coppola juxtaposes images of the meticulous rituals involved in simultaneously carrying out both the Roman Catholic Church baptismal ceremony of Michael
Corleone’s baby godson (as Miguel becomes a literal godfather) with the execution of the deadly Mafia hit he commissions in order to become godfather of the family “business" (his own
baptism by fire).
“Do you renounce Satan?” the priest asks Michael from within the church at the end, as we see the blood-spattered corpses littered around town.
He does.
So forgive me for being overly dramatic, but I couldn’t help but think of that scene as I monitored the live Twitter feed of the 4A's Transformation meeting that took place earlier this week
in Miami.
It turned out that the timing was a bit surreal, as the talk of Erin Johnson’s ongoing discrimination suit against JWT and WPP was still the main topic of conversation,
something the industry ate for breakfast, lunch, and cocktails.
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(I’d add an early-bird dinner too, but no one wants to admit to being old.)
Here’s my earlier take.
Indeed, I am still receiving personal messages from employees
too scared to speak publicly for fear of reprisal. Most mentioned their own personal struggles with similar bigotry in the ad business and lack of appropriate response from HR. And they suggest that
if this kind of persistent racism, sexism, and white-male dominance is allowed to continue, the industry will be sunk from within.
The industry’s facility with manufacturing imagery of
enlightened multiculturalism for clients while achieving internal levels of “you can’t make this up” hypocrisy makes a great analogy for the baptism scene.
All of this sets
the scene for day one of the 4A's conference. For example: Gustavo Martinez, who resigned last week from JWT in a “mutual agreement,” was originally scheduled to speak in a session about
“empowering Latinas.”
He was gracious enough to cancel ahead of time.
Meanwhile, (I am not making this up) JWT was hosting a “Female Tribes” event in London: to
launch its proprietary work, along with a film called “Her Story,” produced with the BBC, celebrating women.
I’ll let the Web site copy speak for itself: “This
living study, conducted globally, makes J. Walter Thompson Company the agency with the most insight, knowledge and research about the largest consumer category in the world: women.”
It
goes on about the need to recognize female capital in the world.
Given the timing (and that Erin Johnson appears as a contact on the site) JWT/London’s tweets promoting the screening
were majorly awkward. Soon, however, the work of the crisis PR team started kicking in, when it was reported that Martinez' replacement, Tamara (“Hurricane Tam”) Ingram introduced
the event by saying: “Diversity and inclusion will be at the top of my agenda,” and "companies don't value women enough."
And then there was the keynote address by Publicis Groupe
CEO Maurice Levy. In response to the inevitable question from the press about the Martinez debacle, he said what happened is a “one-man mistake,” and "not a fair representation of the
industry.”
This response was not well–received either in the Twittersphere, or at the conference. By the next day, when Sir Martin Sorrell, head of WPP, addressed the question in
an afternoon Skype session, it was enough of opposites’ day that he took the opportunity to knock Levy for having the temerity to defend the WPP holding. Sorrell said he disagreed "violently"
with Levy, noting "Maurice has a habit of ignoring the facts and not letting the facts interfere with his analysis."
Still, in getting to the inevitable “rape-guy” questions about
Martinez, Sorrell had learned his crisis PR response points well. He said that 50% of WPP employees are women, but that when you get to the senior ranks at the holding company, the number drops to
33%. That sounds surprisingly good. He also acknowledged that the number of senior-level Hispanics, African-Americans and LGBT people was "unacceptably low."
All this minimized the problem
brilliantly. While adding a tacit defense of Martinez, saying he has yet to be tried in court, Sorrell also said that it was Erin Johnson’s decision to take a leave, and "it's up to her if she
wants to come back to the company or not."
While the case is active, Johnson cannot, and would not, return calls to comment on that matter. But meanwhile, Sorrell makes it seem that the
company is doing everything it can to make her comfortable while she had the unseemly need to sue it.
The spin was enough to cause whiplash.
But while we all readjust our cervical
spines, there were some encouraging signs. One decidedly non-tone-deaf response came from Nancy Hill, president and CEO of the 4A's. Other people in her position might have tried to remain as neutral
as Switzerland, in an effort to appease the gamut of 4A's members.
Instead, she set a sane and rational tone, addressing the issue in her opening remarks, recognizing that the alleged behavior
not only happens, but “happens more frequently than we think." (After Maurice Levy’s pronouncement of his “one-man” theory, Hill also took to the podium to disagree with
him.)
She listed a number of the 4A's efforts created to address such problems, but acknowledged that "real change has to start with you, at the top. If you're the CEO, you are the chief
diversity officer. Look at salaries. Is there a gap? If there is, fix it.”
The issues brought up by Johnson’s suit are not easily answered by monitoring percentages of women and
diverse employees. If there is no support system, if employees from diverse backgrounds are made to feel like outliers, they are not going to succeed, no matter how much the numbers improve. Nor will
there be any real progress if these hires feel that HR turns a deaf ear, or responds insensitively, to their difficulties.
Altogether, it’s going to take massive amounts of what Johnson
allegedly requested for Martinez: sensitivity training.
Later that day, Wendy Clark, the newly installed CEO of DDB North America, appeared to be headed in that direction. She said that
the agency is introducing anti-bias training “that will coach 2,000 employees by the end of the year.”
That’s the kind of inside-out thinking required of ad leaders in the
next few years.
Because despite a world of spin, the reality is that the JWT case is a black eye not only on the agency, but the entire industry -- at a time when advertising cannot afford to
have any more problems. These kinds of lawsuits are a morale-sinker, yes. But most important, they kill the most crucial thing advertising brings to life: creativity.