B-to-b marketing has been around for well over a century, as exhibited by Omnicom’s dedicated b-to-b shop Doremus+Co, which celebrates its 120th anniversary this year. But only recently has business-to-business marketing come to the forefront of the marketing world.

In the past few years, Cannes Lions has added a Creative B2B category, LinkedIn started its B2B Institute, and there has been considerable buzz around the category recently as it relates to creativity.

Doremus+Co is, after more than a century in business, riding the wave of b-to-b popularity, making some recent changes to account for more creativity in the b-to-b space, including hiring Sarah Lent, a global leader in b-to-b marketing and communications, as its new president. 

Lent fills a role that had previously been handled by Paul Hirsch, who has been elevated to CEO and retains the title of chief creative officer. Lent will partner with Hirsch and the entire leadership team to support the Omnicom agency’s mission to help clients navigate complexity and realize the potential of their brand through business-to-business marketing, innovation, strategy and creative excellence.

In addition, she will oversee partnerships within Omnicom and support the expansion of Doremus’ offerings in content, social and demand generation—areas of increasing importance and investment to b-to-b marketers. 

Lent comes to Doremus+Co from VSA Partners, where she was CMO. Her extensive b-to-b background has included positions at Cahan & Associates, along with eight years at Omnicom’s Interbrand, where she worked with large enterprise b-to-b brands across the U.S., Europe and EMEA, rising to executive director. She was also executive director, EMEA at R/GA, and later a senior vice president at programmatic media agency EssenceMediacom.

Lent dealt with Doremus+Co when she was at Interbrand and had great respect for the agency, and she praised the work that Hirsch has been doing in his five years at Doremus+Co, especially as it comes to combining brand building with delivering performance across channels.

“The integration of the two, focused across that b-to-b buyer, I haven’t seen that at any other agency, and that’s what made me really excited about joining Doremus at this moment in time,” Lent told Adweek.

Rising with b-to-b

The growth of b-to-b brands is now outpacing that of b-to-c, according to Enterprise Recalibrated, a special report from Doremus and Interbrand launched as part of Best Global Brands 2022. Doremus+Co states that it is poised to capitalize on this market movement.

Over the past two years, the agency has launched or relaunched eight brands and is now seeing three times as many new business opportunities as in the past. It was also named a Creative Agency of the Year for two years running at ANA Business Marketing NYC’s Global ACE Awards, a longstanding hallmark of creative excellence in b-to-b.

Hirsch was the inaugural jury president of the Creative B2B Lions in 2022 and has seen, over the last five years, the rapid changes in the industry, from the adoption of new platforms and channels to ChatGPT and AI, and clients wondering if they should be on Snapchat or TikTok.

“The pace of change has been pretty incredible, and as a creative I love it all,” Hirsch told Adweek, adding that it was an honor to be the first jury president at Cannes in his category. “The most important thing about that was the fact that, if you can get everyone who’s coming into the space to think about things more strategically, more creatively, it can become more interesting, more mature, a lot quicker, which is the stuff we’re trying to do at Doremus.”

Because b-to-b is now a hot commodity in the creative marketing world, the competition is heating up and Doremus+Co is prepared to tackle it, with decades of experience and a constant search for what’s new in the sector.

“B-to-b has always been pigeonholed into a performance corner,” said Lent. “Today, more than ever, I believe there’s such competition that you need to have a platform and an idea that people believe in and that buy into not just your customers, but your employees.”

Hirsch added that over the past few years, the agency has doubled down on creative, which he marked as a driver of b-to-b growth.

“This continues to fuel success for us and our clients. Now, with Sarah’s deep experience across data, media and technology, we’ve added another layer to our offering that extends our approach further across all communication touchpoints, creating better brand experiences and delivering strong bottom-line growth,” said Hirsch.

He noted work for trucking transportation company RXO and Lego Education as two examples of successful creative b-to-b the agency has done, both of which were honored at the recent Global Ace Awards and earned Doremus+Co a silver in the Creative Agency of the Year category.

Lent will concentrate her initial efforts at Doremus+Co on unlocking b-to-b growth across the Omnicom network, including within the Omnicom Advertising Collective and Omnicom’s DAS Group of Companies, a global group of marketing services companies.

“Anyone who can help us keep realizing our potential and unlocking things, it’s a good thing, so I’m excited to have Sarah’s energy and enthusiasm and adding that to the mix,” said Hirsch.

The most impactful CMOs are the ones who have powered themselves and their organizations, proving themselves indispensable to their CEOs, their colleagues, their teams, their boards and, ultimately, their businesses.

Through their work, they are demonstrating the standard of effective marketing leadership and paving the way for the next generation of marketing leaders. They are the Marketing Vanguard and Adweek is proud to announce, as part of our Marketing Vanguard initiative, the Marketing Vanguard Awards.

In September, we will be honoring 25 marketing leaders who consistently do the following and can show it:

• They advocate for the marketing practice
• They use their visibility to drive the business
• They are positioning marketing as a growth driver in the organization
• They can quantify the value of marketing in the organization

Each nominee must also submit the name of a rising star on their team to be featured in final list alongside the listmaker.

Las Vegas-based online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos has parted ways with its first-ever CMO, Ginny McCormick.

The circumstances surrounding McCormick’s departure are unclear, and Adweek could not reach her for comment.

McCormick’s time at Zappos was relatively short. She ascended to the CMO role in April 2022, having previously served as global marketing director for Amazon Worldwide Access Point. Amazon bought Zappos in 2009 for $1.2 billion.

Before Zappos and Amazon, McCormick held marketing leadership roles at well-known toy companies. She was CMO at Funko from March 2020 through the end of that year. Before that, she spent nine years at Hasbro, where she rose from a senior director role to the brand’s head of global media.

Changes at Zappos

The past several years have been a time of tremendous change for the online retailer. Its founder, Tony Hsieh, led the brand until 2020, when he died of injuries sustained in a house fire not long after stepping down as Zappos’ leader.

At the time McCormick was tapped as CMO, Zappos was undergoing organizational changes, including consolidating various marketing departments, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“We appreciate all of Ginny’s contributions over the past year to help move the organization forward. We wish her the best in her next endeavor,” a Zappos spokesperson told Adweek.

“This is an isolated transition and not part of wider leadership or company changes. There are no immediate plans to fill the CMO position,” the spokesperson said. They declined to elaborate further on McCormick’s departure or what precipitated it.

Zappos, in recent years, has focused predominantly on performance media investments. It spent $60 million in 2022 solely on digital media, according to COMvergence estimates.

McCormick had been expected at Cannes Lions this week, where she was to host a panel with creator agency Whalar. Adweek has learned she will no longer be attending the event.

The advertising industry has failed to make any tangible progress since 2021 in building workplaces that are diverse, equitable and inclusive according to the World Federation of Advertisers’ (WFA) Global DEI Census.

Following on from the marketing body’s inaugural 2021 study, the 2023 report interviewed 13,000 marketers from 160 brands and agencies across 91 countries at varying levels of seniority.

The study found that 1 in 7 people would leave the industry based on a lack of DEI progress, a figure unmoved since 2021 despite industry-wide commitments and efforts to increase diversity and retain talent.

Among women and LGBTQ+ respondents, this figure rose to 1 in 6. For ethnic minorities it sat at 1 in 5. Along with disabled people, these three groups reported the worst lived experiences in the industry overall compared to their counterparts.

Though the needle hasn’t moved, there is widespread recognition that efforts are being made by businesses with nearly three quarters (72%) of global marketers saying their company was “actively taking steps” to be more diverse and inclusive. Opinion on progress was split, with 50% saying things had improved since 2021, 30% said things remained the same and 3% said things were worse.

C-suite management were more likely to have a positive outlook on this, with 58% saying DEI efforts were yielding fruit versus 42% of junior staff.  

WFA chief executive (CEO) Stefan Loerke said the results were “glass half empty, glass half full”.

“We are not hugely surprised to see no measurable change across the global industry in just two years because the challenges are so deep rooted and systemic,” he added.

The challenges are so deep rooted and systemic, they take time to overcome.

—Stefan Loerke, CEO, WFA

Loerke said the industry may not have moved the dial globally, but underscored that efforts are visible.

“In time, our efforts will be rewarded with more diverse, equitable and inclusive workplaces where the best talent will flock,” he said.

Progress stalling when it comes to inclusion

Critically, marketers indicated inclusion efforts had gone backwards.

Respondents were asked questions about their sense of well-being, an absence of discrimination and presence of negative behaviors to inform an “inclusion index” score generated by researchers at Kantar. In 2021 the average score was 64% across all three categories, in 2023 it dropped to 63%.

LGBTQ+ respondents report worse lived experiences at work than their heterosexual counterparts, with an Inclusion Index score of 58% for LGBTQ+ vs 65% for heterosexual staff. The number of disabled respondents has improved compared to 2021 (10% vs 7%). However, their responses suggested they are having a tough time with an inclusion index score of 45% compared to 67% for non-disabled respondents.

We must respond with purposeful action, weaving diversity and inclusion into the heart of our organizations

—Tamara Daltroff, president, VoxComm

As with 2021, the most common forms of discrimination were age, gender and family status. 8% of marketers had experienced discrimination based on their age with 32% agreeing age had hindered their career.

5% of people had come up against preconceptions based on their family or caregiver status, with 42% of all parents agreeing responsibilities at home had help up their career.

36% of women who had taken parental leave within the last 5 years said it had been disadvantageous to their progress at work compared to just 8% of men. 23% felt their gender alone had prevented progression.  

Tamara Daltroff, CEO at the European Association of Communications Agencies and president of comms agency alliance VoxComm, said the ongoing discrimination faced by women, LGBTQ+, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities showed there is still a long way to go.

“These revealing figures are a vital opportunity for our industry – we must respond with purposeful action, weaving diversity and inclusion into the very heart of our organizations, to create a nurturing environment where each person is embraced, valued, and empowered,” she said.

Bad industry experiences

Compared to straight, male and white professionals, women, LGBTQ+, ethnic minority and disabled people had the worst lived experiences with their organizations.

Each of these demographics were more likely to say they are unfairly spoken over, undervalued compared to colleagues of equal competence, bullied or made to feel uncomfortable in the workplace.

Though the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 16% of the world’s population experience a significant disability, just 10% of the DEI census respondents were disabled. 38% said they felt their disability had impacted their career and 27% reported being bullied.

Generally, ethnic minorities reported greater discrimination and less sense of belonging in the workplace. They too were under-represented at senior level with 48% agreeing there was people like them in senior positions against 61% of their ethnic majority counterparts. They were also twice as likely to leave the industry.

While the number of LGBTQ+ respondents had improved year on year they reported a lower sense of inclusion. 28% also said they’d been made to feel uncomfortable at work in last 12 months.

Women and ethnic minorities in particular felt underrepresented in senior positions, with men are twice as likely to be in C-suite roles. Only a third (33%) of women agreed their company provided equal pay for equal jobs, versus 47% of men.  

“There’s not a lack of people recognizing the importance of DEI in the industry, it’s about the level of action needed to really impact change,” said Jason Mander, chief research officer at GWI, which helped conduct the study.

Mental health is another key theme that cropped up throughout the report, with 42% of respondents saying they felt stressed and anxious at work.

Since the first Census ran, the WFA has unveiled a Global Charter for Change. These are a set of universal requirements for global organizations to improve their employees’ lived experiences and ideas for initiatives that companies can adopt.

The full results of the census will be available soon.

In a week where jury deliberations for Cannes Lions come hot on the heels of the Tony Awards, I can’t help thinking that the drama of judging creative advertising would make a great number in a Broadway show. Because when it comes to debating award-winning creative, just like the rap in the musical Hamilton, there’s always intrigue around what goes on in “The Room Where It Happens.” As the lyrics go, everyone wants to know “how the game is played/the art of the trade/how the sausage gets made.” The metaphor speaks to creatives everywhere.

So if you’ve ever wondered what goes on in the jury rooms at Cannes and how the judges separate the best from the rest, here is a backstage tour.

The opinion is diverse – and it should be

The jury room experience is always inspiring. There’s a magic that happens when people with unique perspectives come together to discuss creativity. After all, that’s exactly how we sell the work to our clients in the first place; through dialogue, discourse and debate.

Ultimately, creativity is an opinion, so when we’re interrogating work, it’s important we hear diverse perspectives. And boy do we hear them! Creatives are nothing if not passionate and opinionated. Turns out, so are the CMOs, CEOs and every other human in the room. But that’s how it should be.

Creative evaluation always evolves

I’ve been a Cannes juror for the last three festivals and, as a new generation comes into the jury room, I’ve seen shifts in the way we evaluate work. Every year, something changes; our mindset, our culture, our approach.

Every generation looks at the world differently, holding each of us accountable in a different way. It pushes the boundaries of critical thinking.

This year, in-room emphasis has been on evaluating efficacy. We’ve been doing the research, looking up results and trying to validate that the work in front of us is having a meaningful impact.

Of course, that’s not always possible—some campaigns are in their infancy and the data isn’t yet there. Bottom line though—award-winning creative can’t just be a good idea; it’s got to have impact. It’s got to throw the spotlight onto something that changes the way people think or act. Today’s jurors are hot on this.

We question everything, over and over again

Deliberations are robust, with all work rigorously interrogated. It deserves nothing less.

However big the category, it’s our duty to look at the entire body of work and scrutinize everything through all the different lenses. Whether it’s the idea, the strategy or the craft, our job is to look deeper and measure against criteria.

Every year you see pieces winning over and over again across multiple subcategories. There’s no question they’re fabulous ideas. But are they the best for filmcraft? The best for innovation? The best for the whole creative kit and caboodle?

We examine everything forensically. It’s easy to take a brilliant idea and blanket the category with it. But if it’s going to clean up, it needs to knock your socks off in each of those subcategories.

Golds can come out of nowhere

There’s always standout work that grabs everyone’s attention. But there are also Golds that come right out of nowhere.

Jury rooms are full of different opinions, but the push and pull of professional debate has a remarkable knack for making disparate opinions come together. Sometimes, someone will advocate for work that you’d previously ruled out, yet when you re-evaluate it through a different lens, you suddenly go: ‘Wait a minute … that’s amazing!’ That person offers a cultural or business perspective that makes everyone value something they didn’t appreciate before. In those moments, you see a shift in the entire jury, where something you never thought would make it off the shortlist suddenly bags Gold.

Want proof? Try this. Every juror on an “awarding jury” is allowed to bring back something that isn’t on the shortlist; a personal favorite that didn’t make the original cut. Last year, one such piece was brought back by a juror…. and it went on to win Grand Prix.

That success is a testament to the dynamics of diverse human debate and the drama that occurs in “The Room Where It Happens.”

Now… how can we win that Tony?

In the early to mid-2000s, Wieden+Kennedy and Crispin Porter + Bogusky were kings of creative. CP+B was winning with campaigns like “Subservient Chicken” for Burger King and Mini’s “Counterfeit,” while W+K was going global with Nike, Old Spice and Coca-Cola.

Now, former executives from both those storied ad houses have come together at Portland, Ore.-based independent shop Öpınıonated, as Kate Higgins has joined the six-year-old agency as its first chief growth officer.

Higgins was formerly a vp and account director at CP+B during its heyday, while Öpinionated founder and creative director Mark Fitzloff rose at Wieden+Kennedy, creating memorable campaigns for Old Spice and eventually becoming the executive creative director and partner at the agency before launching Öpinionated in 2017. Fitzloff is joined at the agency by other former W+K colleagues, including president Trish Adams and creative director Rob Palmer.

Higgins’ hiring has brought two distinct schools of thought together and hopes to be a boon for Öpinionated, which has already done smart work for Seventh Generation, Adidas, Nature’s Way and Drumstick. The addition of Higgins is something that Öpinionated hopes will help the still budding agency blossom.

“We’re so excited to get an outside perspective and different opinions to help shape the agency moving forward,” Adams told Adweek.

Passion for great work

A shared passion for great creative brought Higgins to Öpinionated. She saw the Seventh Generation work the agency did and was impressed. After finding out about Fitzloff’s work and knowing the success the W+K team had over the years, she knew that it would be a good fit.

“Great brands are needed today more than ever because of the absolute dumpster fire that is the media landscape,” Higgins told Adweek.

Higgins is more than just her CP+B past, however. She was most recently with Erich & Kallman as the agency’s chief growth officer, her second time with the agency. She also had stints as a president at MullenLowe, partner and chief client officer at Made, founder of consultancy Youngest Child, and account positions at Fallon and Carmichael Lynch.

After five years of building and finding some success, Fitzloff said that the agency is now “ready for its close-up,” with Higgins steering growth, Dave Daines leading strategy, Fitzloff and Palmer leading creative and design, and Adams leading the account team.

“In Kate we see a co-leader pushing us to be even more evolved and better at what we do, but also, more practically, to be a partner who brings her own network and her own world experiences into this mix to collectively get us onto that bigger stage,” said Fitzloff.

Deprogramming the cults

Fitzloff said that the shared focus on the work at both Wieden and Crispin back in the day was coupled with the fact that both shops at the time were “cults,” meaning they had a following and did things in a very specific way.

Fitzloff and Adams admitted that starting a new agency, especially after coming from such charged backgrounds, involved getting out of the singular W+K mindset while applying the best of what they had learned.

“In the interest of growing personal growth, as well as professional growth for ourselves and for the agency, it had to be about meeting new people and embracing alternative playbooks,” said Fitzloff, adding that accepting different approaches, especially those brought by Higgins, will only help Öpinionated grow.

Growth is matchmaking

Fitzloff sees what Wieden did for brands like Nike and Old Spice and he wants Öpinionated to help bring that success to the brands they work with, those that have thoughtful, deep human purposes and insights.

“A lot of our competitors are very much in in the business of short-term buzz and moving on to the next thing. We love a lot of that work and we respect a lot of those agencies, but we see them as short term sugar hits for those companies and not long term protein,” said Fitzloff.

Higgins will help with the growth of Öpinionated in several ways. One of them will be to help the agency get recognized and promote itself with smart branding. While nothing is ready to share, the team promises the agency will smartly bring its story to life. The other way she will help is with finding the right brands for the agency.

“I don’t think of it as sales, I think of it as more of matchmaking … because it’s not about trying to shove our way onto someone. It’s really about like mindedness,” said Higgins.

Digital media and marketing group Jellyfish has been wholly acquired by The Brandtech Group, driving their combined revenue to more than $1 billion.

Jellyfish, which was co-founded in 2005 by chief executive Rob Pierre, currently operates across 38 offices and employs more than 2,000 people. It has worked with clients such as Google, Uber and Netflix.

Pierre will take up the new position of chairman working with David Jones, founder and CEO of Brandtech Group, with a focus on merger and acquisition growth to further scale Jellyfish’s global footprint and capabilities. He will also work with Jones on sourcing “broader group opportunities.”

Brandtech Media founding partner Nick Emery will succeed Pierre as CEO of Jellyfish. He will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the agency with a new board formed featuring Pierre, Jones, Emery, Brandtech Group partner Emma Cookson, vice chair and Brandtech Media CFO Dawn Dickie, group general counsel Betty Louie, Jellyfish CFO Chris Lee, and Jellyfish chief operating officer Ed Ball.

Emery will also act as executive chair of the board.

In a statement, Pierre said: “Fast-paced, fragmented and platform-led, today’s media landscape is changing at lighting speed. Supporting the ambitions of today’s global brands requires something unique, and that’s what I believe we have been building at Jellyfish. The chemistry with The Brandtech Group was instant and compelling. Joining the Group will supercharge our capabilities and ambitions as we move into the next chapter of the Jellyfish story.”

Negotiations with majority shareholder Fimalac began in August. Fimalac will now become one of the largest strategic and long-term shareholders in The Brandtech Group. Fimalac director general Thomas Piquemal and Véronique Morali, Jellyfish chairman and president of entertainment media firm Webedia, will join The Brandtech Group’s board.

Fimalac acquired Jellyfish in 2019 for a reported sum of 500 million Euros.

“Marketing gets ever more complicated and our clients come to us for one thing: to help simplify this very complex world,” Jones said in a statement. “When I created the company, we set out to be the best in the world at helping clients connect content, data and media using technology, and bringing Jellyfish into the Group allows us to take this to the next level.”