Oh hey, did you guys make it to the 4A’s Accelerate conference in Miami this week? We hear the weather was pretty nice…
We were there, and we had a chance to catch up with Orci chief operating officer and director of client services Marina Filippelli for a few quick questions. Here’s what she had to say.
AgencySpy: Are clients becoming more receptive to working with smaller agencies? Are they tired of working with the big holding groups?
Marina Filippelli: For the most part what I’m hearing from clients is they just want each agency to provide a specific value and they want less duplication. So while in most cases they’re okay with having a roster of multiple agencies, if that fits their needs, those agencies need to do a good job of collaborating and finding the overlap … of being able to be more efficient in how they work together.
One thing they do get from big holding companies is this one size fits all [approach]. That sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, so when they’re working with different agencies it’s incumbent on the agencies themselves to bring forward those solutions of how do we work together to give you value and reduce the overlap.
How does this apply to multicultural agencies?
That’s something we’re certainly being challenged with quite a bit, as a lot of the competitive agencies in the Latino space have been swept up in the holding companies. It’s now starting to happen even at general marketing agencies that are not holding companies. You’re hearing general marketing agencies say, ‘Hey, we can do this.’ But at the same time you’re hearing they’re having a really hard time diversifying. If you’re having a hard time diversifying, I’m not sure how you’re going to deliver clients’ business objectives that require multicultural and diverse thinking.
So I think that’s where we still really have a good opportunity. As a multicultural agency, because we’re multicultural at heart, we sort of hire that way inherently. Not every person that works at my agency is from a Latino background, but we always look at people through the filter of diversity. So I think we’re very well positioned to help clients with their business objectives of looking at the diverse U.S. population and not just talking to ourselves.
How will our ongoing evolution into a majority minority country impact the future of multicultural marketing?
I think that multicultural in a lot of ways is the new general market. Those of us who have focused in that area are better prepared for those shifts because we are looking through things through that lens. It’s interesting, I’ve done a lot of research and work with Gen Z and younger kids, and they can’t verbalize it… They don’t think about it that much because it’s so inherent to who they are and how they see the world around them, but they still gravitate toward certain insights. I think those agencies or those clients that understand those insights and those nuances will be better prepared to address that reality.
To what degree do you think clients are aware of that?
I It really depends on your experience. If you are in one of these big multicultural hubs, right now I believe nine out of ten of the top markets are becoming either now or in the next few years majority minority. But if your company is in Ohio … you’re probably not as familiar with it or aware of it.
I think the media agencies have had a big role in how that’s positioned to clients. We used to have a lot more independent media agencies. As everything started rolling up, you’re starting to see fewer points of views represented. Media agencies look at things just from a numbers standpoint of ‘Hey, we can reach a lot of these Hispanics that speak English through general market media.’ Yes, technically you can. The numbers show that Hispanics watch a lot of English language TV, for example. But that doesn’t mean that your marketing’s relevant to them, it doesn’t mean you’re connecting to them. And that’s [something] that a creative agency has to speak to.
Speaking of agencies in general, what do you think they should be doing to address work-life balance for working mothers and ease a transition back into the agency after time off?
I can tell you from personal experience as a working mom it is very much a challenge. One of the things that’s missing from the conversation is not what agencies can be doing, but what clients can be doing … as agencies we do what we can. The reality is that we are responding to client demands and that makes it very challenging for us as agencies, so as flexible as you want to be, as supportive as you want to be of working moms, clients have to change their expectations and their policies in order to mirror what we need to do as a society to support working moms.
At Orci, we’ve been around for 30 years. Our founders were parents and they always believed very strongly in the value of the agency stemming from wanting to support U.S. Latinos and perceiving them in a good light, but also from creating a family atmosphere at the agency. It is not uncommon to see children running around our office because we encourage working moms and dads — because it’s not just about the moms anymore — we really encourage our working parents to be their true selves at the agency. You’re not just a copywriter, you’re not just an account serve person, you’re also potentially the parent of a child, or in some cases an animal, a dog or cat, whatever’s important to you.
We encourage people to be who they are at the agency. Sometimes that means children come in with them [when they don’t have anyone to leave them with]. I’ve definitely seen two or three at a time sometimes. We have little spaces for them where they sort of run wild and do their thing. Sometimes they sit in on our meetings. We do have varying ages and sometimes it’s a couple of hours [after picking them up from school]. I’ve done it, my son has come in and run around with the other kids at the agency, and had a blast. It helps people feel supported and it alleviates some of the stress that working parents can feel and I know that’s not super common at other agencies. It’s a point that we take seriously and it’s been like that forever. We also have dogs at the office.