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Advertising Age

Homophobia and (In)Authenticity at Omnicom: What can a leader do?

by cv harquail on July 24, 2008

omnicom_logoI am struggling to understand the pattern of reactions to a recent critique of an organization’s authenticity. Bob Garfield, writing in Monday’s (7/21) Advertising Age, has an Open Letter to Omnicom President-CEO John Wren, asking Wren to look at the contradiction between Omnicom’s public Statement on Corporate Responsibility and the homophobia represented in three recent advertisements by Omnicom Group agencies TBWA and BBDO.

Exhorts Garfield:

“Stop the dehumanizing stereotypes. Stop the jokey violence. There is no place in advertising for cruelty. Pull the campaign. Do it now. Then tell your agencies how to behave.” (emphasis mine)

Of the 73 comments (so far, at 7.24 noon) on Garfield’s Open Letter, only 4 of these comments refer to Garfield’s central critique and his actual request: that Wren should ensure that the work of the agencies he leads represents the agencies’ policy.

The vast majority of comments on the AdAge page critique Garfield’s characterization of these three adverts as homophobic, while a few support it. Garfield is told everything from that he is wrong, he doesn’t know what homophobia is, he is too sensitive, and too politically correct to the other extreme, that he is naive and that he has not gone far enough in his criticism. In general, the pattern in the blogworld is the same: mostly criticism and some small, occasionally impassioned but not completely focused support.

Some comments get close, but….

Check out how these four supportive comments get closer to the real issue, but still don’t quite make it there:

Karen McBain: ‘Using mass media to reinforce ANY negative stereotype as a means of growing market share and sales is socially irresponsible. The buck doesn’t stop with John Wren: the marketers who paid for the Dodge and Snickers work are just as much to blame.”
* Okay, the marketers need to pay attention too.

Galen Bernard: John Wren should be made aware of this spot and he should be worried. Not that some of his London based creatives are homophobes …but that they are small thinkers.
* Wren should care, but mostly because the ads are dumb.

Terry Floyd Johnson: John Wren not only needs to step in, but make a public apology for so gross of a hate commercials, attacking gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
* Wren should say he/they are sorry. (Is that enough?)

Jack Jones: The spots are only symptomatic of a bigger problem. … A commercial does not hatch in a vacuum. It’s seen and produced and commented upon by scores of people. How many individuals do you think saw this commercial during its production process without noticing the potential issues? That’s the most disturbing part of all. … There continues to be an arrogance and ignorance in our industry that no one wants to admit. Writing a letter to John Wren doesn’t begin to address the real problem.
 * The whole Some people in the industry is are homophobic,racist, sexist… and Wren can’t affect that.

Notice that no one is saying:

john wren omnicomHey Omnicom/Wren–
Put your products where your promises are!

Maybe Garfield’s phrasing is too dramatic, maybe his rhetorical strategy of indignance pushes a few buttons. But even so, why miss the real point, that the CEO should take responsibility for keeping the organization’s behavior aligned with its statements of purpose, vision and value?

What I don’t understand about the responses to Garfield’s letter is that so few people are focused on holding Wren accountable for aligning his organization’s actions with its words. Why is this?

Striving for authenticity, for alignment between who you say you are, what you believe about yourself, and how you behave as an organization, is the responsibility of the organization’s leadership.

And responsibility for being authentic is not confined to leadership: Keeping behavior aligned with the organization’s statements of purpose, vision and value is the responsibility of every employee. The people at Omnicom know this– it’s right here in Omnicom’s Code of Conduct statement:

Our reputation depends, to a very large measure, on you taking personal responsibility for maintaining and adhering to the policies and guidelines set forth here. Your continued cooperation in this regard is appreciated.

So, what are the employees of Omnicom’s agencies saying? What do they think of this criticism of their work and their organizations? And, how is John Wren, Omnicom’s leader, planning to respond?

These are not (only) questions of political correctness and social responsibility; these are questions about whether an organization is willing to hold itself accountable for putting into practice what it says is important.

Given that it is the leader’s responsibility to make sure that the organization at least strives for authenticity, what will John Wren do?

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Suspicious of “Authenticity”, women challenge Dove ads – Again!

by cv harquail on May 12, 2008

The latest controversy over Dove’s "Real Women" ads shows just how suspicious we are of organizations that claim they have become authentic and honest, after showing themselves to be neither.

You may already be aware of the two previous controversies related to Unilever Corporation’s Dove "Real Women" ad campaign . [Jump to previous post for an introduction to these previous controversies.] Now, here comes another controversy— Were any of the photographs used in Dove’s "Real Women, Real Beauty" campaigns modified by a famous photo retouching-innovator, Pascal Dangin?

In an Advertising Age article published May 9 , journalist Jack Neff summaries the chronology of the controversy:

  • a New Yorker article on Pascal Dangin’s innovative methods for altering photographs,
  • subsequent claims that Dangin was misquoted,
  • attempts by Ogilvy & Mather (Dove’s ad agency) and
  • Annie Leibovitz to clarify which sets of photographs were or weren’t retouched,
  • and so on.

As the pixel dust settles, it would seem that the photographs in question were not significantly retouched, and that in fact Dove’s photographs of ‘real women’ presented the women as they more or less truly appeared. And thus, the story has turned to a question of how Dove/Unilever could have but didn’t use the controversy as a marketing opportunity.

Really, Dove/Unilever could have used this controversy as an Authenticity Opportunity.

Jonah Bloom, Executive Editor of Advertising Age has written a follow-up article on how Dove/Unilever has missed a key opportunity to interact with consumers . Thinking primarily about the emerging model of marketing that focuses on what the consumer thinks and says, Bloom reminds Dove that it needs to be ready to interact with their customers at all times and give up the idea of controlling the message. Says Bloom,

"The reaction (by Dove/Unilver, Ogilvy ) also smacked of a brand, or at least an agency, still wanting to control the message rather than genuinely welcoming a fresh twist in the debate….. But the key for two-way marketers is going to be to welcome the cut and thrust of debate, whatever it might bring."

Here’s the authenticity angle:

Marketers only have to ‘control the message’ if the message/ the image they want to present is different from who the organization really is. An organization only needs to control its image when the organization is inauthentic .

Before an organization can truly welcome a debate or even a simple conversation with consumers, the organization needs at least to be striving towards authenticity. It needs to be striving to make its identity drive its image , and forget trying create an image of (what the organization thinks) would make it popular with consumers.


  • To engage in an honest conversation with consumers, an organization must speak directly from its identity. The organization’s words cannot be controlled, filtered, adjusted or photoshopped in an effort to make the organization look better or different from who it really is.
  • Honest conversations require immediacy, or at least timeliness. Adjusting the organization’s words to fit a particular image adds a step and takes a bit of time. People distrust a time lag— time lags make it look like the organization doesn’t know what to say, or worse, isn’t paying attention to consumers. (BTW, as of May 12th there is no information about this new controversy anywhere on the Dove Real Women website.)
  • Honest conversations also require humility. Adjusting the organization’s words to fit a particular image usually includes erasing blemishes, brushing away blame, and avoiding responsibility.

Organizations can present idealized, as-yet-unrealized images of themselves, but these images only hold up as long as they are supported by visible effort of the part of the organization to move itself towards this image. Once an organization’s actions are discovered to be discordant with the organization’s image, customers and stakeholders perceive the organization to be inauthentic, and they stop trusting both the organization’s word and any of its efforts to do better.

Organizations can make mistakes and still be perceived as authentic, if they respond effectively.

The organization needs to acknowledge its mistake, show that it understands consumers’ concerns, and immediately set out to correct the mistake. (See my Glamour Magazine post on this issue.)

So far, Dove/Unilever is addressing some of the facts of the situation, by explaining that only some ads were retouched, and these only in a minimal way. While this response may address the facts of the situation, it does nothing to address the truth of the situation.

  • The truth of the situation is that Dove / Unilever doesn’t get it — it doesn’t really understand its consumers. If Dove really understood women and women’s so-called ‘beauty issues’, they would reach out and engage with consumers and other stakeholders about how the photographs of real women were manipulated so that all the photos were attractive. Dove would discuss how only photogenic ‘real women’ models were chosen, Dove would have explained how the models were posed and lit to show them at their best, Dove would have shown us the original photos, and they would explain why they chose to adjust the photos before printing them.
  • If Dove really understood its consumers, Dove would admit that even an organization that wants to accept real women’s beauty as it occurs in real life still struggles with finding a balance between reality and a what the market defines as "attractiveness" . And, by admitting that the organization itself is struggling with the very issue that real women address every day, Dove might have won over their consumers’ hearts.

As it is, Dove seems either clueless (best interpretation) or caught in the act of faking it. Whatever it it, isn’t real beauty at the organizational level.

At this moment, I’m not sure whether there is a single authenticity-related ‘take away’ from Dove’s experience:

  • Does being authentic mean rejecting perfection?
  • Does being authentic require humility?
  • Does being authentic demand a certain level- but not too much- transparency?

What’s your takeaway? Let us know by clicking on the ‘comments’ line (below the photo) and adding your opinion……

corporate shills dove ad

Graffitied subway ad courtesy of jossip.com.

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