AGENCIES

Layoffs Story: Dentsu Edition

Early this week, Dentsu Group announced plans to cut 6,000 international jobs as part of a larger restructuring plan. 

Raise your hand if you’re ready for me to start writing about agency jobs coming back rather than this pandemic-induced madness .

Zoom in

Although it’s tough to justify cutting 6,000 jobs—12.5% of Dentsu’s global workforce—during the perfect storm of the holiday season and Covid-19, here’s how the agency network explained its decision: 

Redundancy: The pandemic accelerated what some say is a long-needed restructuring plan. 

• “I have never seen so much redundancy of jobs as I did at Dentsu. Everything is recreated at a regional level as well as at headquarters,” an anonymous former Dentsu exec told Ad Age.

Consolidation: Dentsu’s solution to that “redundancy of jobs” = consolidating 160 global agency brands to just six global leadership entities. 

• Example: Dentsu Mcgarrybowen—the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious network created out of Mcgarrybowen’s repositioning in May. 
• “That strategy saw the creation of three lines of businesses last year: creative, customer relationship management and media. Within creative is now Dentsu Mcgarrybowen and Isobar; within CRM is Merkle and 360i; and within media is Carat and iProspect,” per Ad Age.
• It feels important to note that consolidating Dentsu into “One Dentsu” mirrors Publicis Groupe's "Power of One" model.

Accelerating transformation: That’s what Dentsu says its goal is here, per Adweek. If you’ve been a Marketing Brew reader for a while, or have worked on Madison Avenue for even a split second, it’s obvious that the pandemic hit the gas on changes agency life already had coming for it, from consolidation to culture. 

Zoom out

Marketing Brew’s explanation: Dentsu didn't specifically cite in-housing as a reason for the restructuring, but the trend has been putting more and more pressure on agencies. For instance… 

• Nearly three-quarters of internal creative teams were created over the past five years, and 82% of that group reported that workloads have increased in the past year, per World Federation of Advertisers data cited by Marketing Dive.
• And in a recent Marketing Brew survey of 397 readers who work in marketing, respondents cited “in-housing’s acceleration” as the No. 5 most overlooked marketing trend of 2020.

INFLUENCERS

Influencers Now Put on Real Pants for Work

The industry that lines Kardashian and ex-Bachelor contestants’ pockets got way more professional since Covid-19 hit.  

On Tuesday, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) introduced what it's calling an Influencer Marketing Advisory Board. 

• Unilever’s Casey DePalma McCartney will chair the board, which includes execs from Procter & Gamble, SAP, Sephora, Puma, and more.

#ANAgoals include general standardization, fraud reduction, and improving measurement—39% of ANA members are “unsure about the impact of influencer marketing” due to “lack of accurate measurement,” per MediaPost. 

Sound familiar? The Influencer Marketing Advisory Board isn’t the first very boringly named sign that influencing became profesh in 2020. Earlier this year, the American Influencer Council (AIC) was created by influencers for influencers.

• “Up to now, no resource has been available on how to best address events [and movements] like coronavirus or Black Lives Matter…it is the AIC’s responsibility to support the creator community if and when the country faces the next unforeseen event,” AIC founder Qianna Smith Bruneteau said in an email to Marketing Brew. 

Big picture: When we look back at the industry in 20 years, we’ll see forces like the AIC and the ANA as small but significant steps toward the professionalization of influencer marketing. 

SPONSORED BY LIVEINTENT

An Ad About How to Make an Ad

Now this is some content we (i.e. a very average-looking and mostly smart copywriter) can use. LiveIntent is breaking down the dos and don'ts of effective, engaging display advertising. 

For example, we learned that copy should be short and sweet—which is difficult for us because we have been described as “overwhelmingly verbose.”

We also learned about imagery, calls to action, and even what to do with your landing page once your incredible ad drives customers to click. 

As people who are uniquely familiar with the difficulties and peculiarities of advertising, we can tell you that LiveIntent’s e-book has all the the advice, tips, and examples you will need to get those CTR’s through the roof.

Get LiveIntent’s e-book here.

CMOS

Moving Out

Revlon’s new CMO really took the old “move out to move up” adage literally. 

• After climbing Revlon’s corporate ladder between 2001 and 2015, Martine Williamson made her exit.
• In the five years after her departure, she not only served as chief marketer at beauty startup Glansaol, but also as a strategic marketing advisor for Topix Pharmaceuticals.

Fast forward: Williamson returned to Revlon—this time, as CMO—on Monday.

Spot the difference: Many of the marketing leaders we’ve highlighted have bounced around a lot, spending a few months to less than five years at each workplace leading up to their dream jobs. 

But Williamson’s long game path might be worth considering if you’re mapping your quest to the top of this industry. 

• For instance, Claudia Plant, CMO of Hunter Boots, also spent over a decade at one organization (Net-A-Porter) before more briefly serving as Burberry’s senior vice president of brand experience and interim CMO of Charlotte Tilbury Beauty.

My takeaway: “Moving out to move up” might ring true in marketing industry leadership, but putting in over a decade of work at one brand clearly doesn’t disqualify you from future success.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Nielsen unveiled plans to combine its media measurement tools into what it's calling the “Holy Grail of measurement.” 
• Instagram is testing adding timers to Stories to encourage engagement.
• Mother London returned the U.K. government’s furlough payments.
• Jim Beam brought back experiential marketing with a snow globe experience for you and your quarantine crew.

SPONSORED BY POSTCLICK

The next big thing in digital advertising is hiding behind this little link right here. Where’d we find it? From our friends at Postclick, who asked 1,440 digital advertisers what the next big thing will be. If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re smart, and if you’re smart, you know marketing is about staying ahead of the curve; do just that with Postclick’s report.

ADWEEK OR ADWEAK?

Which headlines are real marketing news, and which one is satirical à la Twitter account ADWEAK?

1. Donald Trump’s Twitter Account Is in Jeopardy
2. Sexy Colonel Sanders Gets a Lifetime Movie
3. KY Jelly Rebrands to Kynect
4. Ugg Gives Back to Sheep in Christmas Campaign

Keep scrolling for the answer.

AD ANTIQUES

Crown Light Ad from 1972

Quoth the raven: “Never mind, that’s a crow.”

ADWEEK OR ADWEAK? ANSWER

D. is the fake headline .

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Marketing Brew stories from the last few editions.

• Make Hanukkah ads, not war
• State of the 2021 Super Bowl ad
• Jeep passes the monolith marketing test with social campaign