Greetings from Portland. I'm Doug Zanger, sitting in for David Griner for the next few days.
Each week, it's common to go back and see what the story of creativity looks like. Generally, we find some level of narrative, starting with things published Sunday night from the magazine—like Creative 100, for example—through to the end of the week.
This week, one narrative was about action. And it wasn't just the P&G ad from Grey and Cartwright imploring white America to step up and help eradicate racism.
Though that spot deserves attention (and the necessary action), it was other stories that show it's not just the work that defines where there is room for radical change.
Artist Shantell Martin criticized McCann for an email asking for her help on a Black Lives Matter mural in front of a Microsoft store in New York.
“As a caring, professional, hardworking artist, I’m pointing out something that is systematically wrong so that hopefully, this will make a change,” she said.
And on Tuesday, more than 600 Black advertising professionals signed an open letter demanding meaningful action from industry leadership.
"We’re going to make it clear, as a collective, the exact steps that we want agencies to take to remedy the systemic racism that exists in our industry," said Nathan Young, group strategy director at Persicope and one of the leaders of the effort.
Today, the Adweek agencies team published what holding company CEOs had to say about how they plan to change internally. What's telling is that we've heard much the same from them before (especially in the full Q&As on AgencySpy). One can be hopeful that this is a turning point, but how this all gets to long-overdue action and change remains to be seen.
We'll see what it all looks like again next week, the week after that and beyond.
We wish you a wonderful weekend.
Doug Zanger
Agencies (and sometimes Creative) Editor, Adweek
doug.zanger@adweek.com
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