A trio of Black creatives launched a talent agency that specializes in helping Black creatives find jobs. The goal of Ink-Mgmt is to help even the playing field for Black creatives in an industry that has a clear diversity problem.

The agency was founded by CEO Jason Pierce, who most recently served as a creative director at CPB, as well as Heads of Creative Ant Tull, who will remain in his role as a senior copywriter at Droga5, and Sebastian Walker, who most recently served as an associate creative director at MullenLowe. Tiffany Golden, formerly a director of community programs at Wieden+Kennedy, joined the agency as director of business development. 

The founders met while working at CPB, where they discussed creating something change-making following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

“The one thing we didn't want to do was something that didn't represent us and something that you would just forget about tomorrow,” Pierce said.

Related: Black creatives are nurturing diversity in the ad industry

Ink-Mgmt will look to help agencies and brands recruit talent for creative departments, which Pierce said doesn’t have to necessarily fit within an advertising scope.

The founders said they have spent years in the industry experiencing the recruiting mistakes and missteps agencies make when looking for diverse talent.

“We know what it's like to get ghosted for a job that you were excited about,” said Walker. “We know what it's like to get your dream job and you join the company and then you realize the culture and place didn't really match you."

Tull cited an instance in which he received an email from a recruiter aimed at diverse candidates, and the recruiter used another candidate's name in the email to Tull.

Black talent across the industry remains significantly low: Black employees make up just 7.2% of the marketing industry's workforce, according to a 2022 report by the Association of National Advertisers. A 2020 4A's report found that Black talent made up nearly 6% of agency employees; of that total, 68% were in administration roles and 4% held VP roles or higher, excluding C-suite positions. (The 4A's does not yet have agency data past 2020.)

“Jason was the first black CD I've ever seen,” Tull said. “When you're trying to see a future for yourself in the industry, you're trying to climb a rank, you want to see that it's possible. You need to visually see it in order for you to believe that it's possible.”

Lauren Tucker, founder of consultancy Do What Matters, said creating significant change in the industry will take more than fixing the pipeline to Black creatives: It will take buy-in from the top of executive suites. 

“Elevating excellence is great, and I applaud this talent agency for promoting Black excellence. The headwinds are tough. Leaders love using threats of recession as an excuse for rolling back efforts to improve diversity and representation,” Tucker said.  “Unfortunately, I'm not hearing the whistle of the winds of change in the executive suites of the advertising industry.”

Pierce said the biggest mistake agencies make when looking for diverse talent is thinking too narrowly about where to find it.

It “leads to us sourcing from the same pools,” Pierce said. “Us constantly picking on portfolio schools, constantly picking on our friends that give recommendations, which really just leads to us recycling the same talent over and over again. We have to expand our view on what talent is, what creativity is, to be open to the answers of where creativity lives.”

This includes finding talent that doesn’t have traditional advertising backgrounds or even college degrees, according to Walker.

“There are people out there that financially cannot make it through that level of higher education, but they're still very talented people,” Walker said.

Currently, the agency has its own database of talent and has brought on agency clients such as nice&frank, launched last year by former Goodby Silverstein & Partners executives, and TBWA\Chiat\Day LA. The agency will also look to work with creatives at any level for freelance or full-time positions.

Besides finding the right talent for clients, Ink also offers cultural consulting, helping to identify areas of improvement within an organization to help make diverse talent feel more welcome. 

“It doesn't help if you've done all of the work to find unconventional talent if once they get to your organization, you don't have the environment to sustain or to tap into and grow that talent,” Pierce said.

Once a client hires talent through Ink, it will keep the dialogue going with the hired employees.

“Let’s say you get placed somewhere and you’re a junior strategist of color on your team,” said Golden. “Well, based on your connection with Ink, we can definitely ensure that you have a network of other Black junior strategists or more senior strategists if you need to put minds together or have questions.”

The company plans to donate 6% of its fees to currently undisclosed initiatives dedicated to helping Black creatives.

“It's one thing to place talent and get help Black people that are already professionals by getting them jobs, but it's a completely different thing to think about the future generation and help them exist even in this space. That is something that is very important to us,” Pierce said.