Media Buying Briefing: How agencies navigate clients scaling back DEI, sustainability efforts

As if to punctuate that reality, last week Trump made an ill-advised appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists convention last week, attacking his opponent, vice president Kamala Harris, in an apparent attempt to discredit her by calling attention to her multi-ethnicity .

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump told ABC News’ Rachel Scott who initially asked him why Black voters should trust him. “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

Trump also tried to deflect the direct question of whether he believes Harris is a DEI hire. “I really don’t know … could be, could be,” he ultimately told Scott.

The entire exchange at NABJ crystallized the growing divide between those companies that support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts and those that do not. A LinkedIn study last year showed a 4.5% drop in chief diversity and inclusion officers in corporate America.

For example, brands including John Deere and Tractor Supply Company have recently removed their DEI roles, sustainability initiatives and ceased participation in Pride events in response to criticism from conservative audiences. John Deere in early July said it stopped supporting “external social or cultural awareness parades, festivals, or events.” It will also ensure Business Resource Groups focus on professional purposes.

Reps at John Deere did not respond to a request for comment. Bader Rutter, the brand’s public relations agency of record since 2023, also declined to provide a comment.

To be sure, the brands that have chosen to roll back on DEI and ESG efforts are outnumbered by others who choose a more inclusive path.

For example, Christine Schrader, vp of strategic innovation at Wpromote, said none of the agency’s clients have divested their social or DEI marketing programs.

“Reaching new audiences and diverse customers is still a major priority for most brands,” Schrader said. “On the back end, we’ve definitely seen some brands take the foot off the gas when it comes to DEI and sustainability in media buying, which can take a significant amount of effort and is rarely the central consideration in media planning.”

An executive at a major agency holding company who declined to speak on the record, said modern politics, motivated by driving wedges into the cultural divide, are behind that backing off pro-social initiatives.

“This is all being fueled by politics,” said the exec. “Because everyone is preparing for what may happen in November … But the advertisers that have walked away from DEI are the ones that were never really supporting it anyway. And the ones that have announced they will move forward, we haven’t seen any backlash against them.”

Myosin’s nonprofit platform

For some agencies, advancing DEI goals entails creating tools to facilitate connection and social change efforts on the brand and consumer side, with incentive and simplicity in mind. Full-service growth marketing and BIPOC-owned (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) firm Myosin Marketing last week launched a new platform, Marketing Reimagined, geared at allocating a part of brands’ media budgets into philanthropy.

Brands start with picking from more than 250 nonprofit partners across a variety of causes, including at organizations Feeding America and Salvation Army, selecting a budget and audience — which gets matched based on criteria like demographics, purchase behaviors and emotional connection.

Myosin CEO Sean Clayton comes from large media agencies (previously at Mindshare and its parent company GroupM) and was frustrated by the disconnect between advertising budgets and corporate social responsibility spending. From his experience working with major brands from Google to Nike, he saw an opportunity to create a marketing platform that allows brands to reach customers in a new way while also driving social impact through donations to nonprofits.

“I was always fascinated with how much money was being spent,” Clayton told Digiday. “So it’s like a one way street of constant taking in the marketing and advertising space. Yet these companies’ budgets, 10% of their overall operating budget is advertising, so it’s this massive dollar amount — but their corporate social responsibility dollars are, like, maybe 1%, maybe 2%. So it’s very off.”

The goal is to create a scalable platform that can train other agencies to use this model, building a larger ecosystem of brands and nonprofits working together. Starting at $1,500 a month, the platform lets brands follow up with the consumer with the lead data and send other offers. With the eight-month pilot, Myosin reported seeing brands with click-through rates over 500% and conversion rates going up 250% on the platform. Consumer acquisition costs went down, as well.

Economic and generational audience challenges

Agencies acknowledge that CSR and diversity causes are not a big focus for every client, though — and some are simply facing economic pressures to deliver business results.

Alexandre Carney, vp and strategic planning director at multicultural-focused agency Orci, said “budget cuts and slimmer margins” often impact DEI programs, along with other factors including “total market campaigns that consolidate diversity messaging into a singular shared narrative” — or targeting of psychographics, versus differentiated demographics.

Schrader agreed that clients are also dealing with economic challenges, but “the onus is on agencies, consultants, ad tech and martech providers, and other partners to make the business case for why these initiatives should be a priority. If we’re buying media with diverse publishers or optimizing supply paths to reduce emissions generated by programmatic media, we need to tie all of it back to meaningful metrics that align with business objectives.”

As a Hispanic ad agency, Orci bills itself as a “multi-segment” agency — spanning broadcast to social — with full-service marketing capabilities and an in-house studio for multilingual production. It has worked with brands including Texaco, Honda and Sprint.

Certain brands can risk “reputational damage [or] financial loss” if they continue to neglect CSR and DEI goals, said Azlyn Jeffries, brand strategist of Orci. But the ones that continue investing in social causes often drive “long-term loyalty and market success” with younger, socially-conscious consumers, Jeffries added.

“The absence of DEI voices within companies may lead to more tone-deaf and insensitive marketing campaigns, as was evidenced by high-profile missteps from brands like H&M and Pepsi,” Jeffries said.

Asked about resistance from brands, like with John Deere’s move, Clayton said, “It’s not for every agency in the world. It’s for those that want to do good, that have a certain client set that is open to giving back and has open hearts to healing the world. Our partners that we’re already starting to talk to have that type of muscle already and energy around them, and so that’s really where we’re leaning right now.”

A change in tactics

Broader efforts by some brands to incorporate DEI and ESG into their marketing plans appear to be settling into almost routine. The holding company exec said they have noticed a change among clients that believe in DEI and ESG efforts in that efforts are becoming part of normal marketing routines — rather than specialized or highly publicized efforts.

For example, the exec pointed to this year’s Pride celebrations, which they said has been referred to as the Quiet Pride month, because marketers that support Pride executed their activations without fanfare.

“They’re [marketers are] just showing up in the marketplace — they’re not justifying their spend, they’re not saying they’ll spend 2%, 4%, 6% — none of that,” said the exec. “But if you want your business to survive, you’ve got to add this into your everyday marketing initiatives because the data supports it.”

The reason is, the demographics mandate a more inclusive approach as the American diaspora becomes more diverse. “There’s a segment of consumers that are being under-marketed to that have a completely different way of addressing the market and picking brands,” said the exec. “Every advertiser needs to change their approach whether they want to do it quietly or not.”

Color by numbers

YouTube keeps dominating over video competitors TikTok and Instagram, recently seeing the biggest increase by market share among the social media giants. As Stocklytics.com found, YouTube’s market share more than doubled year-over-year to 9.5% in July. YouTube boasts more than 2.5 billion global viewers this year, while Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are starting to see a decline in YoY market share. — AS

More stats:

• In July, Facebook’s market share fell some 3.5% compared to the same month last year. Instagram’s fell from 14.3% to 11.8% year-over-year. Twitter’s market share now stands at 7.05%, down from 8.85% a year ago.
• Reddit and Pinterest are growing, though: Pinterest now holds 6.6% of the market, an increase of 6% compared to last July. Reddit went from 0.58% to 2.12% year-over-year.
• YouTubers spent an average of 27 hours and 43 minutes watching videos on the platform, or 20 more minutes compared to last year. This is the second-highest usage time behind the leader, TikTok, per the Digital 2024 April Global Statshot Report.
• The top three — Facebook, Instagram and YouTube — control more than 83% of the social media market as of July. Together, they have more than 7.2 billion users — or about 87% of the world’s population.

Takeoff & landing

• Stagwell is the latest holding company to announce H1 2024 earnings, and showed a modest 2% increase in net revenue to $1.1 billion, while organic net revenue for the period was 1.5%. Stagwell also said it secured $324 million in new business in the last 12 months.
• Holding company Havas bought Australian media and production agency Hotglue, which will now merge with Havas Media Melbourne. Terms weren’t disclosed but it expands Havas footprint in the region.
• Account moves: Publicis landed media duties for mortgage firm Rocket Companies, which had formerly been with IPG’s UM … Stagwell’s Assembly picked up global media duties for CRM platform PipeDrive … GroupM’s Wavemaker in the U.K. won media duties for L’Oréal International Distribution in EMEA.
• Personnel moves: Crossmedia hired Jess Lewis to be its first chief technology officer, bringing her over from Dentsu, where she had been global head of product management, solutions … Holding company WPP named a new chairman in Philip Jansen, the former BT and Worldpay CEO, who takes over from long-serving Roberto Quarta in January … B2B agency Bader Rutter promoted David Jordan to be its new CEO, as current CEO Jeff Young becomes the Milwaukee agency’s chairman.

Direct quote

“The insight here is that most clients still want to do the work [around social or DEI-driven marketing]. They just need support in understanding how to make it make sense strategically. We’ve had clients pull campaigns away from dates like June for Pride and instead run them at other times of the year with messaging supporting the LGBTQIA+ community — which is actually a big positive.”

— Marisa Thomas, CMO at Good-Loop

Speed reading

• Ronan Shields broke down the steps that led to last week’s latest tech M&A move, with Outbrain purchasing Teads.
• Marty Swant dug into the numbers behind the surge in ads promoting AI products, notably from IBM, Microsoft and GoDaddy.
• Antoinette Siu explained why augmented reality and virtual reality aren’t going away in agencies’ minds, even with AI serving as the shiny new object.
• Michael Bürgi looked at B2B agency JumpCrew’s pitch to clients around the concept of growth as a service.