George Tannenbaum on the future of advertising,
the decline of the English Language and other frivolities. 100% jargon free.
A Business Insider "Most Influential" blog.
Tuesday, June 1, 2021
Blah. Blah. Blah. Ouch.
On Friday, before the three-day weekend commemorating mattress sales, carnage by AK-47s as a god-given right, and the triumph of the January 6th attempted coup over what was once American Democracy, a friend sent me a note.
He had seen, online, a 967-word ad for a creative director. Since I am always looking for something to write about in this space, I quickly asked him to send me the masterpiece.
I can't think of a single job, from brain-surgeon to boot-licker, that would demand 967-words to describe it. Most descriptions, I've noticed, get blurrier as they get longer.
As for creative director, I think I could write a pretty good job description in about 12 words.
"Do good work. Lead people. Teach people. Guide clients. Win business. Smile."
Really, how much more do you need to say? If you need a little more detail, you might add, "media agnostic. 10+ years experience. Sense of humor."
What everyone along the way has forgotten is what was drummed into me the first time I was at Ogilvy, back in the 90s and the 00s, when they were still in business.
It's this: that every communication, action and inaction defines a brand. They're all part of a composite-drawing brands are making every day. So when a c-level person looks like an imbecile on her Instagram, or when a similar potentate sends out tweets or whatever of banal homilies like "Aim High," the entire company is affected. And hurt.
If anyone with any power is reading this, you should really check and see if your company does shit that reads like this. If you do, you should call me. If I don't have time to fix things up, or I'm too expensive, I can probably give you subway directions to the Bronx Zoo from anywhere in the five boroughs.
Once there, I'm sure you can find a chimp that can do a better job.
By the way, on occasion when I worked for an agency, I would get a brief or a piece of copy that was badly written, almost incomprehensible. In the interest of saving my time (and my breath) I would use this site which would give me a general reading score of the copy. Sometimes I would subject my own copy to the site. If nothing else, I found it was helpful in spotting stupidly long sentences. It's usually pretty simple to cut those in half or in thirds.
I put the job description I pasted below through that test. Here are their scores.
Worse, the copy below starts with a 38-word sentence. And has sentences as long as 70 words. If you read it aloud, that would be roughly 30-seconds without pause.
This is how our industry seeks to attract people today.
I think there was a time when we cared more and did better.
We couldn't do much worse.
--
Creative Director
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX New York, NY 1 week ago 27 applicants
About the job
XXXXXXXXX is the 6th largest US retail asset manager and the 13th largest investment manager globally, and our more than 8,000 employees worldwide are dedicated to delivering an investment experience that helps people get more out of life. We are purely focused on managing a comprehensive range of active, passive and alternative investment capabilities, which we draw on to provide customized solutions aligned to client needs, our most important benchmark.
Job Purpose:
XXXXXXXXX's Americas Creative Director is a critical leadership position and part of the Insights, Analytics & Marketing team whose purpose is to accelerate net revenue by driving client demand. The Insights, Analytics & Marketing team is diverse in terms of both demographics and experience with an empathetic culture that puts employee and client needs at the center. Invesco sees an opportunity to be more relevant to existing and prospective employees and clients by breaking through the asset management category “sea of sameness” with a recently launched modernized global brand promise - Greater Possibilities Together - and digital-first visual identity. If you are someone excited by understanding insights to transform and optimize design capabilities across multimedia paid and owned platforms, using your expertise to consult EMEA and APAC colleagues, and working with marketing leaders who empower the creative process, this could be the opportunity for you. We are looking for an experienced Creative Director with strong “right brain” and “left brain” skills. The Creative Director will also use data and client research to concept test, as well as optimize creative execution. In addition, he/she/they will keep multiple streams of business-critical work running efficiently and effectively, determining ways to scale the new modernized brand identity. The Creative Director will also lead and evolve our current “fixed and flexible” team resource model that balances high-caliber internal talent with contractor resources and a core team of external agency partners. Collaboration with Digital, Data, Client Research and Regional/Global brand and marketing partners is also critical to the role. This leader has an opportunity to oversee and influence creative development across multi-media channels including advertising, social media, content partnerships and collateral, as well as our multi-year NCAA sponsorship. The Creative Director will closely partner with our Digital UX/UI team on web experience, as well as with our Human Resource and Internal Communications partners on employee and prospective employee touchpoints. We have much work ahead to reach the peak of our ambitions, so we seek someone who understand that creativity and design are languages that constantly evolve to express our people, thinking, ideas and firm to employees and people who work with Invesco.
Who You Are:
Open, kind and collaborative, able to work across disciplines, departments and regions to build trust and shared success
Able to inspire business partners (portfolio managers to sales people to thought leaders) who know they need creativity to help their stories shine, but need help seeing, embracing and enabling it
Highly organized and effective at governing process, workflow and ongoing resource model
An advocate and enabler of every facet of the creative process, from ideation to production - incl print fulfilment and collateral production - to measuring success, and you value and nurture the people and talent behind them
Passionate about your craft, as well as a digital and data-centric thinker and partner
Specifically You Will Be:
Playing a leading role in the modernization of our brand, as a consultant to marketing partners around the world as they practice and roll out the new identity system
Leading, advocating for, exemplifying and troubleshooting our new brand standards and system
Driving the development of compelling content and campaign activations to drive measurable engagement and reputational metrics in the Americas
Running and optimizing the Americas Creative resource model balancing top quality internal talent with external muscle where relevant
Overseeing the growth and mentorship of Americas creative talent, including thoughtful guardianship of career journeys and skills development
Being a proactive and energetic voice across Insights, Analytics & Marketing and the firm
What You’ll Do:
You’ll lead and manage a team of talented, nimble, hard-working full-time and contract team members, alongside a stable of external partners, across a range of ongoing and ad hoc projects and workstreams:
Brand Modernization - Leading, advocating and activating Invesco’s new global brand identity, to help differentiate the firm, its content and experiences through more human, creative design, voice and expression
Partnering and co-leading this effort with the Head of Global Brand Management and a range of regional partners, who look to the US for leadership and partnership in different areas
Reinforcing across the firm the new system is and how it should work, helping answer and route questions, challenges and feedback
Campaigns - Activating the new brand system across paid and owned media and content (advertising to events to content and paid media activations and storytelling) alongside the Brand & Content Activation and Multimedia teams (both part of Acquisition Marketing) and our various agencies
Partnering closely with our excellent Digital Design and UX team (Digital Marketing) to support and advocate digital-first thinking and activation
Workflow and capacity planning can be challenging and it’s critical that you have experience organizing, managing and optimizing workflow, projects, partners and resources
Our aspiration is to think, plan, create, distribute, measure and optimize content as successful publishers do, and alongside our Editorial team and different content-producing partners, this role is a key supporter and contributor to this ambition
Work Experience / Knowledge:
10+ years’ experience in creative leadership, whether client side or agency settings
Experience with or within a global firm/brand
Personality, passion and patience - a positive, sleeves-up, we-can-do-anything nature
Empathetic, servant-leader mentality who puts team before self
Exceptional at building and communicating concepts/programs to various stakeholders
Strong partner and stakeholder management, facilitation, concept development, project leadership and communication and management skills
Experience of working in or with regulated industries - understanding of key responsibilities, dependencies, updates, data and a regulated environment, is a plus
Strong understanding of and appreciation for the role of Data & Analytics
The ability to connect the dots between partners, mediums and disciplines
A highly organized mindset to consistently balance and optimize talent, resources and process
Formal Education: (minimum requirement to perform job duties)
BA/BS degree or equivalent design qualification
Knowledge of digital-first best practice, disability standards etc.
Working Conditions:
XXXXXXXXX and the Insights, Analytics & Marketing leadership team has been highly focused on supporting and enabling employee health and wellbeing during the Pandemic and how we work and collaborate amid blurred boundaries, the stress of balancing home and work, and the volume of work at an ambitious company
The firm is currently exploring various definitions of job roles, ranging from office-first, to remote, to hybrid.
This role obviously needs to as locationally present as required, consistent with the needs of the team and the business, but will be hybrid in nature.
FLSA (US Only): Exempt
The above information on this description has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this role. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job. The job holder may be required to perform other duties as deemed appropriate by their manager from time to time.
Invesco's culture of inclusivity and its commitment to diversity in the workplace are demonstrated through our people practices. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, age, or veteran status. Our equal opportunity employment efforts comply with all applicable U.S. state and federal laws governing non-discrimination in employment.
By the way, if you believe, at least roughly in the notion of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, you might want to read this article from The Wall Street Journal about the merger of two HCLOs--Holding Company-Like Objects, MDC and Stagwell--which is a Hospital Corporation that treats deer and moose.
If you want to see what the ad industry is really about today, try to read this.
Like creative director jobs have nothing to do with creating or directing, ad agencies have nothing to do anymore with advertising.
Mark Penn leads both MDC Partners and Stagwell, which plan to merge.
PHOTO: TERESA KROEGER/GETTY IMAGES
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One of MDC Partners Inc.’s largest shareholders is opposing the advertising company’s proposed merger with Stagwell Media, a private-equity fund focused on marketing services, saying the terms unfairly favor Stagwell’s investors.
Indaba Capital Management LP said in a letter to the Special Committee of the Board of Directors, created by independent board members at MDC to evaluate the merger proposal, that the proposed deal is “conflict-riddled and poorly-structured,” adding that it plans to vote next month against it. Indaba owns about 12% of MDC’s stock.
In the letter, Indaba claims the structure of the proposed deal undervalues MDC, and that the proposal to provide MDC shareholders with 26% ownership of the combined company is too low. Indaba said MDC shareholders should own 37.5% to 40% of the new entity.
MDC and Stagwell are both led by Mark Penn. He has been chief executive of MDC since 2019 and is the founder and managing partner of Stagwell.
MDC houses creative ad agencies such as 72andSunny and Anomaly. Stagwell’s portfolio includes public-relations agency SKDK and a majority stake in digital shop Code and Theory. The companies announced their agreement to merge last December.
“Although we believe that management has done an impressive job navigating through the pandemic and driving improvements at MDC, that is not a justification for the Special Committee to essentially rubberstamp the unfair terms desired by Stagwell and Mr. Penn,” Indaba wrote in its letter.
The committee responded with a statement. “We are disappointed that Indaba has chosen to take its private concerns public and believe its analysis and other suggestions are inaccurate and irresponsible.”
Making the case for the merger, the committee in its statement added that Stagwell’s digital assets and revenue growth will help lift MDC. “MDC has been in the midst of a transformation, but has not yet returned to organic growth and remains constrained by the high leverage on its balance sheet as well as a portfolio of agencies that are heavily weighted to creative and traditional advertising,” it said.
Indaba’s move is the latest headache for MDC, which has experienced a number of leadership and financial challenges in the last decade, including client cutbacks and a slowdown in new business at some agencies, a board shake-up instigated by activist investor FrontFour Capital Group LLC, and an earlier Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into the company’s accounting practices and the expenses of its then-chief executive Miles Nadal. The company agreed to pay a $1.5 million civil penalty to the SEC to resolve the probe.
Indaba’s letter describes a potential conflict with Mr. Penn running both companies, saying the special committee should focus on eliminating even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
A spokesperson for MDC Partners, citing a proxy statement, said the independent special committee was formed with independent financial advisers and lawyers to negotiate a deal on behalf MDC shareholders and to mitigate and avoid any conflict.Mark Penn’s financial interests and incentives are greater at Stagwell than at MDC, Indaba said in its letter, referring to a regulatory filing that includes terms of his financial arrangement at Stagwell. “We believe that Mr. Penn has all the incentives to root for Stagwell, not MDC Partners Inc., with regards to terms of the pending transaction,” it wrote.
Indaba in its letter also requests that the committee revisit the determined fair stock value range for MDC’s shares and increase it to reflect recent improvement in the share prices of the ad industry’s large agency holding companies.
“Its findings and value range reflect a pandemic-ravaged environment rather than an economy in recovery,” Indaba said.
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