‘New year, same tone-deaf landscape’: Wieden+Kennedy receives backlash over first local hires
Wieden+Kennedy has revealed its first local creative hires to service the recently-won McDonald’s account, but has quickly received backlash for a lack of diversity in its initial all-male lineup.
As reported by Little Black Book on Monday, the US advertising agency announced Roy Leibowitz and Chris Wilson as its new group creative directors, and Jack Elliot and Lochie Newham as senior creatives.
The appointments come as Wieden+Kennedy sets up a Sydney shop, after winning a chunk of the McDonald’s creative account last month. The agency, which already works with McDonald’s in the US and Canada, will be responsible for the brand’s local Chicken and McCafé advertising, while DDB will remain the main agency of record.
Where was all this anger when the Innocean CEO recently replaced her male CCO with a male ECD? Given her vocal criticism of how male dominated our agency creative leaders are this was her opportunity to take action and address the inbalance. Not one LinkedIn word commenting on this but plenty of WTF? comments around adland.
@ummmmm
Hiring “the best applicants” is what a boys club says. Same thing as the classic its all about the work.
That’s laziness and the core of the problem.
I hire diverse people to create modern work so that they compete with your “best applicants”.
Mumbrella comments section becoming the new CB comments section
Maybe they were the best applicants?
I think the comment was a bit unfair….and I have nothing to do with it.
it is still ok to hire men as well as women for creative roles and it’s actually bloody difficult to hire good senior female creatives….because everyone wants them. There’s going to be a delay in a more equal gender split at senior levels in creative because of how few female creatives there were/are in the pipeline. The industry needs to quadruple it’s efforts at increasing female representation at the beginning of the funnel.
but re Wieden specifically, let’s see what the rest of the team looks like before we start being too critical
Talk to leaders in advertising privately and they’ll tell you it’s very hard to find top, local female talent. Advertising is no longer the top-paying creative industry (hello tech) the conditions are unsustainable (hello profit), America and the UK pay far better than Australia and the really talented ones are very well looked after where they are.
Having worked with all sorts of weird and wonderful people over the years, your portfolio gets you in the door, your personality keeps you there, and gender has very little to do with the decision-making process.