“But are they given opportunities, are they given strong client challenges, are they given chances to be promoted in the right way?” she adds in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
“The big fight right now is keeping people in the business. In order for us to grow, we have to invest in that middle group of individuals now who are excited and want to work in our business. If we loose that excitement, if we loose them, we’re really going to be setting ourselves up for failure in the future.”
Warren has more than two decades of agency experience along with a stint at the 4A’s managing its diversity programs. In 2005 she founded the non-profit organization ADCOLOR to help drive diversity and inclusiveness in the creative and technology industries.
Not long ago, the only conversations about diversity and inclusion that Warren had at Cannes were informal ones on the beach. Now they have spread to Inkwell Beach on the Croisette. “In the past, diversity was simply an appearance by Kanye. I think we’ve moved past that,” Warren observes.
In addition to Omnicom employees, she was joined at the festival by like-minded clients. “I’m here with Microsoft and P&G and iHeartMedia. These organizations that take diversity and inclusion really seriously approached ADCOLOR and myself to partner with them so that they could have an authentic representation here on the Croisette.”
Asked by interviewer Jon Watts, who is managing partner of research and strategy consultancy MTM, what the future holds, Warren says diversity and inclusion are always evolving. As a high-ranking executive of color she feels it’s “incumbent upon me not just to figure out how to make people rise up, but also in my spare time and also through work reach back and bring others along.”
She doesn’t consider herself a role model but “a real model. I’m transparent, I’m vulnerable, I’ve failed forward, I’ve failed hard, I’ve picked myself back up. This is who I am.”
Partnerships with organizations like the 4A’s and the American Advertising Federation are mutually reinforcing. “It’s so refreshing to be able to rely on partners who know us well and know where our heart really stands,” Warren says.
Building authentic relationships with employees is particularly important when dealing with younger generations because they represent “the future of our business. What I’m hearing is that they want authentic relationships with organizations.” It goes beyond just having a job to “where their values match the organization’s.”
You are watching Beet.TV’s coverage of Cannes Lions 2019. For all of our Cannes coverage, please visit this page. Thank you to the sponsors of our festival coverage, which are Amobee, Innovid, Nielsen, RTL AdConnect and Teads. Special thanks to Hearts & Science for hosting Beet.TV for the Festival.
]]>This year at Cannes, the Palais is exactly where Warren will be. “Like, I literally willed it into existence. It is not a beachside conversation. It needs to be the big stage,” Omnicom’s SVP, Chief Diversity Officer says in this interview with Beet.TV. “I’m super excited.”
Warren will join Edward Enninful, Editor-in-Chief of British Vogue, HP Chief Marketing Officer Antonio Lucio and British actress Thandie Newton in a 45-minute session titled Diversity—a Values Issue and Business Imperative—Requires Bold Action, hosted by Omnicom and HP.
A description of the session reads: “In order for the creative industry to remain shapers of culture and society, it’s critical that we move beyond theory and talk by taking bold action. Research proves diversity initiatives are more effective if they have support at the top. It also requires measurement to hold ourselves accountable.”
Beyond the metrics and statistics to be featured at Cannes, Warren has a fairly simple rationale for determining the value of hiring diversity. “What I say is, ‘What’s the value of sameness?’ That’s how I respond back. Because no one can answer that. No one wants to and has an answer for what sameness has done for your business.”
In a “constricting industry” such as advertising, “there’s other companies that are providing more creative solutions because they’re infusing equity and diversity in the hiring process and bringing in great minds and doing it in a way that’s equitable. That’s how you answer that.”
She has company in her viewpoint in the person of Merck CEO Ken Frazier, who is often asked about the business case for diversity. “His response is, make the business case of sameness for me. It always gets people because you really find it hard and you struggle to think of the things that come out of being the same.
“If you have the same ideas, the same people, the same thought process, your company can do well but it won’t evolve,” Warren says.
While mentoring has always been important to Warren, she considers herself a coach. And she expects those who she is coaching to be coaching her. “So I stay on top of things because I’m not just providing responsibilities and answers to things that I’ve overcome so they can jump over the land mines that maybe I stepped on in my career.”
This video is part of The Road to Cannes, a preview of topics to be addressed at Cannes Lions. The series is presented by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. FreeWheel is a Comcast company.
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