Inside agency mentorship programs challenging the industry’s DE&I problem

This is the first part of Ad Age’s two-part series on agency mentorship programs. Check out part two here. Four years since the racial reckoning of 2020 that drove many agencies to introduce mentorship programs, there has been some progress in bringing more diverse professionals into advertising. Yet agencies are still struggling to retain the employees of color they do recruit and develop them for the next steps in their careers. These mentorship programs are typically free and run by the agencies; in most cases, they give participants—people recruited from other industries and underrepresented backgrounds without prior exposure to advertising—experience working with senior client executives on real client briefs and a chance to build their portfolios. In the most successful cases, shops hire these recruits after the program ends, or set them up to get hired elsewhere. See our 2023 Marketers of the Year here The problem often comes after they are hired, as agencies fall short on providing continued nurturing, mentoring and guidance. “A long-term metric needs to focus on inclusion as well as what level is being targeted within the agencies to drive change at the C-suite,” 4A’s President and CEO Marla Kaplowitz said. “We need paths to promotion, and that likely involves mentorship and training and development, but also requires the leadership team to be intentional in creating a plan for change—both short and long-term.” The fast pace of agency work leaves little time for training and mentoring, and the nature of the ad business often has executives always on the clock, chasing profits and meeting client needs that have only become more demanding in the shaky economy. Also read: Agencies struggle to retain junior-level employees While that puts all junior employees at a disadvantage, it particularly impedes those of color, said Lauren Tucker, founder and CEO of inclusion and management company Do What Matters. “They are expected to do more with minimum training, especially in thinking and acting strategically in a complex world of data-driven communication,” she said. “For many [people of color], it’s easier to leave the industry.” “Any business function right now, across holding companies and agencies, is strained, challenged,” said Dentsu Americas Chief Equity Officer Christena Pyle. “We are feeling it; we feel that in DEI. When there are economic conditions, there is a hyper-focus on revenue growth and winning, and sometimes that mindset can push other facets of the business that are critical to be a second consideration.” Prioritizing development There are agencies providing a thorough grounding for diverse newcomers to the advertising world. Among them are Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Droga5, Wieden+Kennedy, BBDO and VML. The most successful programs don’t try to fit candidates into a box; they teach candidates about the industry to help them discover the job that best suits them. For these programs to succeed, Megan Beatty, human resources manager for marketing communications agency Taylor, said it’s crucial to have support from top leadership. She said the problem in general with agencies is that they come up with big ideas that are difficult to sustain year over year. “Sustainability comes from continuous accountability and buy-in from leadership,” she said. Taylor was one of the early signers of nonprofit 600 & Rising’s pledge to share annual staff diversity figures. According to its website, Taylor’s total employees are 60% people of color and 74% women, while 41% of its leaders are of color and 68% are women. The agency paid for all its employees, including Beatty, to take part in a mentorship program from She Runs It, a non-profit organization that seeks to propel more women into leadership roles across the marketing industry, from 2018 to 2020. Through that program, Beatty was connected to a mentor for two years. “She helped me both professionally and personally,” Beatty said. “If I had a work question, I’d ask her what she would do. She provided guidance and advice to help me navigate the new nature of my role. From a personal perspective, she was always checking in on me, making sure that my mind was good, my heart was good; that really made a difference, knowing she cared about me.” Beatty said for any mentorship program to be successful, the mentor should seek cultural coaching and training on emotional intelligence. It all comes back to training. “Where a mentorship program can go wrong is when the mentor does not have access or agency to obtain the proper training,” she said. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs A dedicated leader Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ The Academy, a mentorship program and free alternative to ad portfolio school, has been successful so far because it has one dedicated leader, Dan Balser, whose sole focus is on the program. Balser said the program recruits creators who don’t know about advertising, so the first step is to give them a basic understanding of fundamentals such as the different agency jobs. Once that’s established, the students create samples for their portfolios. They’re also taught about meeting deadlines, working with clients and, most importantly, how to work with colleagues on getting work done, key aspects of any agency job that juniors are not typically trained on, he said. Balser acknowledged that agency executives generally don’t have the time to train junior employees on all of these aspects, highlighting the need for someone whose sole job is as a teacher within the agency. “GS&P is busy and I’ve had instances where I have struggled to find [a lecturer for a specific day],” Balser said. “I had to go to a third or fourth team to see if they were available to teach a class. I think for an agency to truly nurture people like we are, it requires one full-time person to do it. This is a full-time job for me. I have no other distractions; when a student texts me at any time of the day, I’m always there for them.” Introduced in 2021, The Academy has so far graduated one class of 13 students. According to the agency, all the graduates of that first class received job offers, with 30% going to GS&P. The agency is currently running its second class of 15 students. The first class was 79% people of color; the current class is 87% people of color. Unlike many portfolio schools, which offer two-year programs, The Academy is for one year. Also read: Why ad agencies are still relying on portfolio schools Carlos Hernandez was a sign designer for his father’s company in Oakland, California, before graduating last March from The Academy. He was the first person GS&P hired from the program, joining the Omnicom Group shop last May as a designer. Hernandez said one of the best parts of going through The Academy before joining GS&P was getting acclimated to the culture of the agency, having interacted with many of the creative directors during the program. Having never worked at an agency at all, that was an even more critical facet of the program. “One of the hardest things about starting a new job is [thinking], ‘I don’t know if this person’s going to like me; I don’t know how to talk to this person; is this going to be awkward?’” Hernandez said. “I knew everybody already because of The Academy. So, instead of going in head down just trying to do my training, people would come in and hug me and [say], ‘I'm so happy when I heard that it was you [who was hired].’ The design team took me out for lunch that day; it was amazing. [GS&P] feels like home; it feels so welcoming.” He said the program’s “anatomy of an agency” was particularly beneficial in helping him understand how exactly a campaign is formed—that part of the program had two people from each department come in and explain what part they played in putting together one of the agency’s Super Bowl ads. “That was amazing because, one, we got to meet amazing, high-level creative directors and it was also a quick way for me to learn, OK, these are the departments or the parts that make up an agency, something I had no clue about,” Hernandez said. Super Bowl commercials Tracking the latest brand and agency plans Enter here Success stories Momentum Worldwide Copywriter Trey Alston participated in Droga5’s 10-week learning program, which he said helped him dig deep into being a copywriter and led him to beginning a successful career. Droga5 says its free D5in10 program brings in 20 students every year, counting more than 100 people who have graduated since it opened in 2017. Under the program, students attend a three-hour class once a week to learn about advertising fundamentals and receive portfolio-building assignments. While declining to be specific about its success rate, the agency said, “People have moved to work at companies across industries including marketing, advertising and technology.” “There are so many amazing and unique creatives out there who would never be considered by an agency because they’re not traditionally trained, which means we’re missing out,” said Tiffany Edwards, Droga5 global head of diversity and inclusion. “D5in10 is our way of moving beyond those limitations.” Omnicom’s BBDO launched the BBDO Collective in 2021 to help support underrepresented production makers. As of this writing, 15 members have graduated so far. Wieden+Kennedy has a program specifically for current students enrolled in Historically Black Colleges and Universities called ADMagic. The program is in its fourth year and runs once a year in the spring, accepting anywhere from 10 to 20 students who are provided with mentorship and experience with real client briefs. Students are taught everything from brand management to creative work, strategy and design, according to the agency. Charity Pourhabib, the creator of the program and a brand manager for W+K, won the 2023 Change Agent award at ADCOLOR for creating ADMagic. Read more about ADCOLOR 2023 here Pourhabib is a graduate of Hampton University, an HBCU, and crafted the program around what she said she felt was missing from her early experience in the ad industry. “I've been essentially creating all these pieces of ADMagic [by] looking at my personal journey and the journey of my peers,” Pourhabib said. “I talked to them about what would have been nice to have, what would have made it easier, what are the unnecessary hurdles that lie ahead, what hindered you from knowing exactly what you wanted to do. Sometimes you spend two years as a strategist when you really wanted to be a producer, but you just didn’t even understand the language around it or had the exposure to it.” That resulted in Pourhabib designing ADMagic around what she described as three pillars: Department panel sessions where students hear from everybody at different levels from the agency’s various offices; a mentorship aspect where students receive three mentors from different departments and functions; and opportunities for the students to work on real briefs with the challenge being to come up with tangible solutions to client problems that get down to the nitty-gritty of even price considerations. “It’s really designed to understand what their passions are, where they want to go and then, how we can be tools to really help them reach their [goals],” she said. Making the investment Ogilvy said it increased its financial investment in professional development and retention programs targeted at women and Black, Indigenous and people of color by 36% in 2023 from 2022. As part of those efforts, the agency introduced “The Brotherhood” leadership program specifically to help retain and elevate Black male employees. The pilot took place over seven weeks last year in the U.S., with seven employee participants, and focused on various topics including “psychological safety, imposter syndrome, the power of creativity.” Participants are continuing to undergo executive coaching and there are plans to expand the program. All of the agency’s participants have stayed with Ogilvy so far; 10% have gone on to receive new projects or responsibilities, 20% have been presented with internal or external speaking opportunities and 10% have been promoted, as of this writing, according to the WPP agency. Emmanuel Reid is one participant who has since been promoted, rising to account executive last year from assistant account executive. Reid worked with Tope Ajala, Ogilvy’s global head of diversity, equity and inclusion, on mapping out the program. Reid said Ogilvy worked with The Adversity Group to create “modules” for The Brotherhood designed to not only increase retention and hiring of Black employees but to allow these participants to thrive in the industry after the program ended. Efforts such as the ongoing executive coaching are a critical component in setting participants up for success, he said. “Having the executives and the C-suites there to learn directly from in these intimate settings was really important,” Reid said. WPP sibling VML (which was formed following the merger of VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson) has introduced various training programs, including partaking in McKinsey’s invite-only executive leadership program. Last year, the shop introduced leadership training for diverse professionals including Ascend, a program for its Asian and Pacific Islander talent. The first class included 19 employees who were set up with executive sponsors and coaching; 95% of participants are still at VML. Another of VML’s programs is Ujima, created in 2020 to give anyone, regardless of their level, access to a mentor to help them gain new skills and carve out a path for promotion. According to the agency, 93 people have participated in Ujima and 90% have participated again, either to get additional mentors or to become a mentee to someone else. VML has seen more success running multiple programs each focused on targeting specific groups, said Francis Carrero-Green, the agency’s senior talent development manager, equity, inclusion and belonging and learning, growth and experiences. “When you begin strategizing on your programs, be clear and intentional with the purpose and goals for the program,” Carrero-Green advised other agencies. “Make sure you also provide training, learning opportunities and support. You also need to monitor and evaluate the program while making any needed adjustments throughout.” FCB Chicago has seen success in embedding employee development aspects into its mentorship and internship program, called Explore. The last cohort had 32 interns, “of which 26 were seniors (in college) and hireable; 19 offers were extended for full-time roles, 18 of which were accepted and hired,” according to the IPG agency. Under the program, each intern is paired with an FCB employee and participates in mandatory one-on-one weekly meetings. “Mentors provide professional advice, check on project progress and discuss mental health [and] the adjustment from graduation into working in the advertising industry, ensuring that our early-career talent is getting the support they need as well as a great foundation to continue their careers long term,” according to the agency. “While mentoring is certainly one of the ways we become more competent in our discipline and wiser in navigating our careers, it is sponsorship and the political investment in diverse talent that will foster greater inclusion at agencies and within the industry at large,” FCB Chief Strategy Officer Vita Harris said. “Mentorship alone has not and will not get us there.”

Inside agency mentorship programs challenging the industry’s DE&I problem

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