Havas New York CEO Laura Maness is at the helm of one of the world’s most influential ad agencies. Earlier in her career, Laura focused on helping women rise in corporate America, and now, her perspective has widened to address the lack of representation of professionals from underrepresented communities in the ad industry.
She joins host Porter Braswell to discuss how having more representation is good for the ad industry, why breaking down systemic racism means looking at the language we use, and how to hold corporate leaders accountable for increasing racial representation at work.
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LAURA MANESS: There was such an emphasis for me personally for many years, and I think what I realized through that journey is that had I put that same level of attention and focus on truly fighting for justice and really prioritizing and putting the emphasis on our black and BIPOC employees, where would we be?
PORTER BRASWELL: From HBR Presents, this is Race at Work – the show where we explore how race affects our careers AND our lives. I’m Porter Braswell. I left a Wall Street career to start a company called Jopwell – because I wanted to help corporate America build a more diverse workforce. Each week, we talk to a different leader about their journey with race, equity, and inclusion. These are the conversations we don’t usually have at work. But this show is a safe place to share and learn from each other.
PORTER BRASWELL: Do you ever think about the people who create the ads we all talk about? Do you ever wonder how their backgrounds and experiences influence their work? Work that can be so influential to our culture? This week, Laura Maness is here to talk about the business case for improving racial representation in the advertising industry. Laura is the CEO of Havas New York – one of the world’s largest and most influential ad agencies. Their work has included campaigns for BIG brands like Dos Equis, IBM, Unilever, and Citigroup – to name just a few. Our conversation started with Havas’s recent efforts to make its culture more inclusive and equitable.
PORTER BRASWELL: Let’s get into a little bit the recent movements that have happened within Havas. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, I believe Havas went out and did a survey around understanding your employees’ race within the U.S. Out of the 4,000 employees, it revealed that six percent were black and just under three percent of the executives are black. When you saw those numbers, what was your first, honest reaction?
LAURA MANESS: It’s a starting point. Releasing the data was really about understanding where we are – to see where we can go. Clearly the mix needs to shift. We released our “Commit to Change” plan, I believe it was in the middle of July. And really took a 360 view on the level of inherent bias that is part of really every aspect of the company. It’s in our community. It’s in society. I think to really understand that, at the most intimate level, it was about starting with our employees and having one on one conversations with hundreds of people to really understand what it’s like and focusing at home first. There’s a tendency to – we’re fixers and we’re fighters. People want to immediately take action and write a check or do things that claim the narrative. For us, it was about a much more thoughtful 360 approach to unpacking those experiences and trying to listen and learn and understand what we need to do. This is not designed to be a short-term fix. There are things that are in the plan that don’t cost anything. It’s about focus and prioritization and intention and driving accountability at scale.
PORTER BRASWELL: Yes but what was your first personal reaction? I understand, from a corporate perspective, it was – this is a starting place, so here are the things we have to do. But that moment when you saw it, take us inside of your personal thoughts. Were you shocked? Were you not surprised? What hit you?
LAURA MANESS: I was definitely taken aback, but not shocked because I think it’s clear, just in the numbers and we had several employees that hadn’t self-identified. It hadn’t been a requirement. Even to be able to transparently share and release the data we had to unpack some of the systems that enable us even collecting that. Really understanding where we are and recognizing that we need to accelerate change for all the programming and efforts to build a culture of consciousness and creativity and to not have it equally represented is unforgivable and it needs to change.
PORTER BRASWELL: What was it that sparked, we have to now address it? Whether it’s Havas or the larger ad industry more broadly, the lack of representation has always been a challenge. So why now?
LAURA MANESS: The level of intensity and I think the events of George Floyd certainly refocused. We had, like I said, for years we’ve had an all-in global DE&I [diversity, equity, and inclusion] approach. We’ve always believed, as a company, and even personally, I’ve railed against a bit a single role, owning the accountability for this. This is a shared accountability. It needs to be owned by every single person in the company and every single leader, in order to drive the impact and change. When we reflected on our all-in approach and across our US agencies what was the focus. And here we are in New York as the flagship, role modeling behavior on behalf of the globe. And realizing that for the efforts – and certainly there have been considerable efforts along the way – it just hasn’t yielded a different mix. That’s what needs to change.
PORTER BRASWELL: Do you find that with the representation that currently exists, and has existed in the past, has that influenced or impacted the type of work that Havas can go after as you are setting out to advise clients on creating authentic brands that help resonate with, in many instances, diverse communities?
LAURA MANESS: I do think it’s front and center and will continue to be a new lens in which partnerships are shaped, absolutely. I think it starts by really understanding what we all mean when we say diversity and where it’s rooted and how that needs to show up in the work. It’s interesting, I was recently in an assembly and we were talking about how important language is and starting to dissect the roots of diversity. People often misunderstand that it’s not about sitting next to one another or having people in the room necessarily, but it is about focusing on equity and justice and history and references and points of view that are going to shape the work itself. And so it’s not about being in the room and feeling superficially like you’ve checked the box on having a diverse team. It’s about the whole experience and how that comes to life in the work and creating a safe environment.
PORTER BRASWELL: I know that you are a big proponent for advancing the culture and driving better representation. As an ally, what are some of the things that you do to help show up and make that impact?
LAURA MANESS: It’s an everyday experience. It’s continuously being willing to be vulnerable. It’s about putting myself in uncomfortable conversations and getting to the root of that and learning as I go and then bringing that experience back into the agency and shaping that as a leader to make sure that the values are clear, that the accountability is there and felt, and is being driven no different than you would a client or working on a pitch to drive to an outcome.
PORTER BRASWELL: Do you have examples for listeners for specific times, when you reflect back, when you were a very powerful ally? Or other times where you look back and you’re like, I should have done it differently?
LAURA MANESS: Yeah I think one of the lessons that I’ve learned is it’s about shifting power and getting out of the way and de-centering. Again, I think as fixers and fighters, there was such an emphasis for me personally for many years, and we talk about this journey of trying to raise consciousness and build healthy rituals into the business and really put an emphasis on women and championing women and creating programming specifically designed to help accelerate and up level women from the mid-level into the c-suite because we had seen that drop off. And we saw incredible results. We saw promotions. Almost every department in New York is run by a woman. We have retention that is twice the industry norm. We see that what you put your attention toward and when you set an intention like that, the evidence is there – when you measure it, you track it, and you put your focus there. I think what I realized through that journey is that had I put that same level of attention and focus on truly fighting for justice and really prioritizing and putting the emphasis on our black and BIPOC employees, where would we be? We see three years of “Fem Forward” and what that’s yielded as a result across our company – and not just in the major cities where we’ve piloted these programming, but even globally as a majority. The fact that Havas is majority women is something that, when I started eight years ago, was certainly not the case. I can equate that experience to personally being a better ally, not for women, and largely women of privilege, but for our Black community, which is the emphasis and the priority right now.
PORTER BRASWELL: I appreciate you being so specific about where the emphasis needs to be. And can you explain the why behind that? Why should it be on Black employees?
LAURA MANESS: Because of the systemic and inherent bias of the system. It has been oppressed and it needs to be the focus. You know, the invisibility of racism and our own language that almost hides the emphasis and depositions in a way. We were talking about this coming out of a recent talk that I sat through. And I have a seven-year-old – he just turned seven. We were talking about Rosa Parks and the example that they used was through language. Rosa Parks had to sit at the back of the bus because of the color of her skin. It’s not the color of her skin. It’s not about her specifically. But if we don’t start to create language that’s more clear and direct – to be able to say that Rosa Parks had to sit at the back of the bus because there were racist laws that required her to do so, and then start to get into the actual context and realities around that and actually talk about racism. That’s something that happens at our household with our seven-year-old. That’s something that also needs to feed back in as a CEO of Havas. It’s language creates reality. And it’s just been amazing, I think, just how much my perspective has changed when we’ve really taken a step back and really looked at the business from a bias point of view. Because even things like our real estate footprint or our merger and acquisition strategy or all of the components of the business, we have tons of systems and processes that exist in our community. It has to start there. It’s unpacking that system and then working through the actions against that change. I do think that it’s been incredibly, like I said, enlightening. It continues to be a daily journey of listening and learning, but I’m really starting to see the impact of the dialogue. I know that over time, we’re going to see the impact of the change.
PORTER BRASWELL: So how do you hold people accountable? What will you do to ensure that this now bleeds through the culture of Havas?
LAURA MANESS: The first thing is, in launching the “Commit to Change” plan, we were intentional about time gating everything to really drive that level of accountability. We’re looking at all facets of this. One of the first things we did in North America was launch a committee. The committee is representing across our group, so we’re divided up into Creative, Health, and Media. We have nine members that really represent Black, Asian, Hispanic, LGBTQ community. And their role in this is to really help create a forum to scale and accelerate the accountability. But it is a cohesive approach across the entire region. That’s just one example. Our goals, our compensation is tied to this, and everyone in the company is accountable for this. You know, we’ve talked a lot about education and ownership and skip level and up level promoting. And we have a program underway right now that’s a talent assessment that’s completely deconstructing and re-engineering the way that we assess talent and promote. We have a management development program in the works. It’s measured. It’s tracked. And it’s exciting. I’ve never seen this level of energy around this. And I’m feeling the impact already and we’re nowhere near the kind of impact that we can yield. But I think it’s about maintaining this intensity and continuing to take these actions and continuing to hold everybody accountable for them.
PORTER BRASWELL: I love the energy and passion. And I love that diversity is bleeding throughout the entire organization and it’s not just one person’s job. If it was, it wouldn’t be successful. But we talked about the focus on the Black population within Havas and more broadly within the industry. That’s a new, very specific, focus. So what happens when employees disagree? How do you have that conversation internally? How do you get them on their journey or remove them if they’re really not down to be a part of that? How do you deal with that as a leader?
LAURA MANESS: I think it is a thousand small decisions. We have ERG’s and we are doing a better job of connecting those across the group to help address the – I’m the only one, or I’ve been the only one – in different pockets of the organization. We have a program called “Press Pause,” which is now running through our DE&I [diversity, equity, and inclusion] filter because it’s important that we hold each other accountable. I think culturally, the strength of that – I mean, one of the insights, and like I said, it’s about being vulnerable. One of the insights came from an employee that said, “Stop saying family. We’re not a family. Family owned, seventh generation, family-owned Havas. Yannick Bolloré, the Bolloré family – they’re family. We’re not family. We’re coworkers. And it’s offensive.” That was like – take a step back for a moment and I didn’t realize the impact of what we thought of as endearing to bring people together was actually alienating and excluding. Again, it’s a thousand learnings. It’s a thousand small decisions and interactions, but it’s about creating a safe space to enable people to recognize the impact of their language, to actually be able to say their race and people want to hear that. I think it’s going to be a journey.
PORTER BRASWELL: And for listeners, can you clarify who Yannick is in that story?
LAURA MANESS: Yannick is our Chairman of Havas and Vivendi. He took the reins for Havas in 2013, I think it was end of 2012, beginning of 2013.
PORTER BRASWELL: Awesome. I appreciate that. Is there a message that Havas wants to lead with that, if the industry is going to effectively help companies and brands more authentically connect and engage with this country. As there are changing demographics in this country and of course globally there are changing demographics – what does that mean for the industry and how it has to start to look if the industry wants to remain relevant in being able to advise brands on the best way to authentically connect and engage as they’re changing demographics?
LAURA MANESS: Yes, absolutely. It’s our collective role to dismantle racism and it does require everyone. And it’s not about risk management. It’s about being equity first.
PORTER BRASWELL: As you think about the future, if Havas starts to resemble what this country looks like and globally – what’s the output? How does that change the messaging for brands that you work with?
LAURA MANESS: Yes, I think it’s more representative of the reality. And it’s unfortunate because I think, you know, our peers in the industry feel like they need to run out and hire as many demographics as possible. And often we’re pulling from each other’s own mix. That’s not actually addressing the core issue. And it’s actually not going to do anything to change the systemic problem in the industry. And it’s not going to show up in the work and the bias that exists inherently in the work.
PORTER BRASWELL: Last question, and this is a question that I ask all of our guests. Should race be discussed at work?
LAURA MANESS: Absolutely.
PORTER BRASWELL: And why?
LAURA MANESS: Because it helps us gain a more in-depth understanding of how we can better support and be active anti-racists. It’s important, I think, to understand the context and to be willing to approach these complex, emotional, personal, and professional conversations about race – wherever you are. And to be able to show up as your whole self wherever you are, and to really be more attuned to the language of what’s required for us to really make change in this justice movement. I do think that the sensitivities and the opportunities for learning are there and the discussion is the enabler of those learnings and of that action. We all have the opportunity, I think, to flip the script. And for all the ways in which race is currently being hidden and weaponized, it’s our collective responsibility, I think, to have the common sense and to come together and be able to have these conversations and learn together and grow together.
PORTER BRASWELL: Awesome. I think that, for me, what I take away from this conversation and what I hope listeners take away is that there is an acceptance that representation needs to be a focus of the industry more broadly. And with Havas being the leader and you being the leader of that, that this is something that you are taking seriously. You’re willing to engage in these dialogues. These should be public conversations. We’re all learning through it. I think that, to me, that came across in this conversation. That’s the goal. That’s why we’re doing this show.
LAURA MANESS: My big thing is, and I say it all the time, words matter very little without action. To be a leader in the company or even in our industry and in society at this time – and I don’t care what vertical you’re in just as a modern leader – if you’re not taking accountability for this, and sustainability, you’re not going to be a leader, let alone the viability of the business moving forward. So it’s a necessity. And I do think that at its core, it’s about providing the most meaningful work experience for everyone.
PORTER BRASWELL: Well, I truly appreciate you taking the time and sharing your journey and your thoughts and your insights with us. Havas clearly plays a major role within the advertisement and public relations world. And so, I’m optimistic that if you all get this right, everybody else will follow. And that’s impactful. So I appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation with us.
LAURA MANESS: Thank you so much.
PORTER BRASWELL: That’s Laura Maness, CEO of the advertising and public relations agency, Havas New York. This episode was produced by Amy Chyan and edited by Anne Saini. I’m Porter Braswell. Thanks for listening to Race at Work – part of the HBR Presents network.