Ad Industry Vets Navigate Immigration; Dealing With Losing 100,000 Followers: Wednesday's First Things First

Welcome to First Things First, Adweek’s new daily resource for marketers. We’ll be publishing the content to First Things First on Adweek.com each morning (like this post), but if you prefer that it come straight to your inbox, you can sign up for the email here. 5 Foreign-Born Agency Creatives on the Many Difficulties of the Immigration Process On Monday, we shared the cover story for the latest issue of Adweek, which took an in-depth look at how the Trump administration's immigration policies have broadly affected the ad industry. Today, we're sharing individual stories: The Canadian copywriter whose visa woes eventually led her to leave America, unlikely to return; a French-born head of strategy who feels like he was treated different because he is white; and the Dreamer who worries about his status as DACA is still up in the air. Read more: We shared stories of five individuals and their tenuous situations. What Losing 100,000 Twitter Followers Over Night Taught Me About My Business Priorities If you've got a couple thousand twitter followers like me, you probably don't notice bot purges. Here and there you'll lose a dozen followers. But if you're like New York Times best-selling author Amy Jo Martin, it could mean losing 150,000. Overnight. That can weigh on your soul. Or be incredibly freeing. Read more: Martin provided Adweek with a first-person account about dealing with losing mammoth amounts of followers. How a Handful of the Fastest Growing Agencies Are Managing the Industry’s Changing Landscape Last week, we revealed our list of the 100 Fastest Growing Agencies in the world. During an event celebrating those shops, four of their CEOs spoke about their success stories, but also their pain points. Meryl Draper, co-founder and CEO of video agency Quirk Creative, revealed the agency doesn't pitch, calling the process "ludicrous." Read more: Learn more about how Quirk Creative, Egami Group, Obviously and O’Keefe Reinhard & Paul Chicago exploded, which averaged 425% growth from 2016 to 2018. Just Briefly: The Rest of Today's Top Insights and News Facebook Rolls Out Stories Ads That Direct People to Messenger Conversations With Brands Q3 2019 Ratings: Fox News Marks 71 Consecutive Months as the Most-Watched Cable News Network Greta Van Susteren: ‘News Orgs and Hosts Need to Stop Talking About Competitors as Each News Org Has So Many Skeletons In Their Closets’ Fox News Changes Election Brand for First Time in Network History Ad of the Day: Mother. Lawyer. Gold Medal Triathlete. Meet Nicola Spirig, the Role Model Our World Needs [kickout id="1"] In the continuum of sports, few events are as symbolic of determination and commitment as the triathlon. So it might be tempting to believe that being one of the world’s best triathletes would require sacrifices that keep you from giving your all to other pursuits, like raising a family or pursuing a career. Not so for Nicola Spirig. She can—and does—do it all. Hispanic Heritage Month: 3 Questions With Andrea Diquez, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi What do you think your company is doing well to support Hispanic employees? Three out of six people on the leadership team are Hispanic, which helps people at all levels see a path for themselves and find mentorship within their community. Where do see areas of improvement? And what are you doing in response? I think people need to be proud of and celebrate their differences. If we’re all the same, nothing new or interesting can take shape. However, for this to work, we have to set the stage at the very top of our organizations for these differences to be leveraged as assets versus untapped opportunities. How do you make sure diverse voices are heard in your company? We make sure that an environment where diversity thrives is created at the agency every day. I personally make time to seek out different points of view and foster constant communication throughout the agency. I believe that when it starts at the top, it trickles down fast. My goal is that every voice is heard at Saatchi NY.