In the time between the May 2 leak and the June 24 Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson decision, many marketers and agency leaders were silent on the issue of abortion. But not everyone.

After the leak, Meryl Draper, CEO and co-founder of video ad agency Quirk Creative, asked her LinkedIn connections if there was interest in forming a rapid-response coalition of agencies and creatives to provide pro bono work for pro-choice organizations. She told Marketing Brew the response was “overwhelming.”

“I think sometimes people are just looking for a way to contribute, but it’s hard to take the first step,” she said.

By the numbers: To date, Draper has made 34 matches—10 on the day Dobbs was announced—across 15 pro-choice organizations to support needs like SEO, web development, photography, and media planning. With Roe now overtuned, they don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

Zoom in: Amy Merrill, digital director and co-founder of Plan C, which provides information on at-home abortion pills, told us the match program was an “incredibly timely offer after the leak.” One of the agencies Plan C was matched with after reaching out to Draper was Grey Horse, which has helped with things like media training, social media communications, and press.

• “A lot of people starting nonprofits, they’re obviously super knowledgeable about the actual cause, but they don’t necessarily have skill sets around, ‘How do I need to position this? How should we be talking about this for the most impact?’ That’s where the ad industry can come in and provide support that will make a difference,” Draper said.
• Merrill said Grey Horse has helped get the word out about Plan C’s resources for information about abortions. “We have to [highlight] these roots of access for someone living in a restricted state to understand what is still possible so they can mitigate extra harm or mitigate this violation of their human rights as they are blocked from choice,” she said.
• Receiving pro bono help, Merrill said, has helped free up Plan C’s resources to support its staff, grassroots efforts, and abortion funds.

Kate Gardiner, CEO and founder of Grey Horse, told us her agency allocates about 20% of its time to pro bono work. Beyond Plan C, the agency has also worked directly with the Hope Clinic for Women in Illinois and Melissa Mills, the daughter of “Jane Roe” Norma McCorvey.

The day Roe was overturned, Gardiner said all 10 of her staff members were working pro bono on reproductive-rights causes.

Continue reading here.—KH

We spent last month taking a closer look at the creative side of our industry. Check out our stories below, and hit Reply to let us know which creativity-related trends and innovations you’re keeping an eye on.

Why celebrities are setting their side-hustle sights on advertising

• We’ve all heard about actors who started doing commercials so they could work in entertainment. Brad Pitt once shilled for Pringles and now has two Oscars. But what about the stars who dream of working not just for, but in the ad industry?

TikTok chops are ‘huge’ for creative agencies right now

• Good news for people who spend too much time on TikTok—creative agencies (probably) want to hire you. As agencies continue to find ways to attract and retain employees, some roles and skill sets are in higher demand than others. At creative shops specifically, TikTok creators are climbing that list.

Yes, advertising students are working on Web3

• Even if the market isn’t taking Web3 too seriously (gulp), advertising students are. Apparently, it felt like “every other” application to One School, an online portfolio school for Black creatives, included a pitch about NFTs or the metaverse over the past two semesters, Oriel Davis-Lyons, the school’s founder, told Marketing Brew.

The creative challenges of the metaverse

• A bar or a restaurant in the metaverse may seem counterintuitive; you can’t get a buzz from a virtual beer or bite into a piece of pizza when it’s made of pixels. Nevertheless, some brands are eager to set up shop on platforms like Decentraland and Roblox, presenting a new set of creative challenges for their agencies.

Kennedy Hammond is giving a tour of her “zero-waste bathroom.” She shows off tablets of toothpaste stored in a small jar, a bamboo toothbrush, an even smaller refillable bottle of locally made face serum, and bamboo-sourced toilet paper. There isn’t a single plastic bottle in sight. Instead, shampoo and conditioner have been pressed into neat bars and rest on a wood plank in her shower. “I never put liners in my trash can,” Hammond says, “because there’s nothing ever in there.”

• Hammond’s tour is on TikTok, where she shares her zero-waste lifestyle with her 256,000 followers. The 24 year old from Visalia, California, says being zero waste means a home is at least 90% free from trash, like the kind of single-use plastic containers that shampoo is normally sold in.
• But her lifestyle goes beyond reusables in the bathroom. She doesn’t waste food and she composts her scraps; she also upcycles as much as she can (spaghetti-sauce jars become drinking cups). The garbage typically produced in kitchens, bathrooms, and laundry rooms doesn’t exist in Hammond’s house, and that’s by design.
• “People who aren’t familiar with something are going to obviously say it’s hard,” Hammond said, referring to the labor and commitment zero waste living requires. “Everybody can be zero waste. It’s whether or not you try or you want to try.”

Big picture: Zero-waste influencers like Hammond are growing in number on TikTok and Instagram. Their aesthetic is ubiquitous—part minimalism, part DIY—and their tone is stunningly positive for a topic as dire as the apocalyptic climate crisis.

Read the full story on Morning Brew.—AM

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

WFH: Why Airbnb’s work-from-anywhere policy is actually a marketing strategy—and not bad for recruitment either.

Tweet, tweet: Twitter shared some best practices for ads on the platform. They would know.

Teamwork: Playing video games can be good for team building, says science. Sure, why not?

Talkin’ tech: From drones and robotics to the metaverse and augmented reality, Emerging Tech Brew keeps you up-to-date on all the tech that’s shaping business and society. Subscribe for free.

Looking to make a career switch but don’t know where to start? Look no further- check out the Marketing Brew Job Board today!

Today’s featured openings:

• Senior Social Media Manager- Twitter at Wix
• Account Executive at Ideas That Evoke
• Marketing Manager at Connect Appointments

See more jobs or post your job opportunities here.

Stat: When it comes to measuring influencer marketing, 40% of marketers say “they rely on influencers themselves or brand partners to self-report performance,” according to a report by Publicis Sapient and Launchmetrics cited by Ad Age.

Quote: “From what I have seen, sponsorships that are already live will be honored, but I am having a hard time seeing anything else come through, at least while the crypto winter lasts.”—Dion Guillaume, crypto exchange Gate.io’s global head of PR and communication, talking to Digiday about the advertising vacuum created by the crypto crisis

Read: Fear, Uncertainty, and Period Trackers

::drumroll:: Introducing The Brief: A Summit Presented by Marketing Brew

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You’ll hear from a powerhouse panel of speakers that will spotlight innovations, highlight strategies, and provide solutions to the modern marketer’s biggest challenges. Sounds good, right? Dust off your work pants and join us.

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Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Two years in, the free, virtual school for Black creatives has 100 alumni and wants to continue growing
• For marketers, AR filters can drive engagement and awareness
• How’d all those brands get into Stranger Things?