FBI agents have interviewed at least two former employees of public relations giant Ruder Finn about work it was seeking to do for the Chinese consulate, the former employees told Business Insider.

Both people said the Chinese consulate had been in talks with the agency in late 2019 to hire the firm to promote positive news about China and its economic impact in the US. Business Insider granted anonymity to the former employees so they could speak candidly.

Then the coronavirus pandemic broke out in Wuhan, China.

"It was not a good time to spin a China story with the media," one of the former employees said. "But what we recommended is that they could use social media to amplify stories that are positive or neutral."

The former employees said the FBI reached out this past summer and asked them questions about a social media account that the person said Ruder Finn created to publicize China; who the employee's consulate contacts were; how many times they met; who attended such meetings, and who was involved from Ruder Finn.

Other questions involved the consulate scope of work, recommendations Ruder Finn gave to the consulate, and how much and how the consulate was willing to pay, they said.

"The agent framed it to me as, 'This is an issue of interest and there wasn't a formal investigation. We're just doing some research on what position the FBI should take on this,'" the second former employee said.

Ultimately, the Chinese consulate didn't hire Ruder Finn, the former employees said.

Working for foreign governments and entities can be lucrative for PR agencies. Ruder Finn currently has a $1.7 million assignment doing social media and digital work for NEOM, a $500-billion mega city in Saudia Arabia, according to public documents.

Lobbyists and representatives for foreign governments, including PR firms, are required to register with the US government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Ruder Finn is not registered with FARA to work for China, according to publicly available information. A Ruder Finn spokesperson confirmed the agency doesn't work for the consulate but declined to comment further.

Asked to comment, an FBI spokesperson cited Department of Justice policy that prevents the agency from commenting on the existence or nonexistence of any investigation. A representative for the Chinese consulate didn't respond to several requests for comment as of press time.

Prosecutions of lobbyists for failing to register have been rare, The Washington Post has reported.

But Joshua Rosenstein, a lawyer at Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock, who's not connected with Ruder Finn but who helps PR firms comply with FARA, told Business Insider that the DOJ has "signalled repeatedly over the last several years that it was expanding FARA enforcement and has reminded the consulting world broadly that FARA applies to work that includes PR and comms, dispelling the conventional FARA only applies to lobbying." 

Rosenstein said, speaking generally, that a PR firm doesn't have to have a contract to work for a foreign government in order to be required to register with the US government — it just has to conduct certain activities on its behalf, and that the more substantive the work is, the higher the chance is that the firm has to register.

"It's a fine line between reporting registerable work and doing a business pitch," he said. "The laws say if you act at the specific request of principal and perform political activities including comms services for a foreign government, then registration is required."

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NOW WATCH: Why thoroughbred horse semen is the world's most expensive liquid

Stan Richards, the founder of Dallas-based ad agency The Richards Group, stepped down today after reports that he made racist remarks in a meeting last week.

Richards said in a statement that since he would have been fired at a publicly held company, he was firing himself. Creative director and 40-year agency veteran Glenn Dady will take over agency operations.

Richards and Dady made the announcement at a remote, all-staff meeting. One person who attended said Richards told employees he would be "a stranger to the company." This person also said that layoffs were expected and that the agency would support anyone who chose to leave.

According to multiple reports, Richards responded last Thursday to an idea for a multicutural ad for longtime client Motel 6 by saying "It's too Black," adding that the ad might offend or alienate Motel 6's "white supremacist constituents." The news was first reported by Ad Age.

With close to 700 employees, The Richards Group describes itself as the largest independent ad agency in the US. It has been owned by a nonprofit since December 2019, when Richards announced his succession plan.

Richards apologized to staff on Friday, but several of The Richards Group's largest clients, including Motel 6, Home Depot and Keurig Dr Pepper, have left the agency.

The turn of events caused some surprise at the agency. First, Richards said earlier this week that he was prepared to step down for the good of the company. But then Dady backtracked, saying the company would be better with him in place. A spokeswoman said they felt the decision deserved more time.

One employee said some senior leaders met with Dady and pressured him to convince Richards to step down.

Another said they felt the company only acted after clients dropped the agency and that decisive action last week would have felt very different.

"[Stan's] not willfully racist; he's behind the times, and he made a mistake," the employee said. "But the responses to those comments, even if they were made in error, have to be unequivocal. We didn't feel the strength of leadership in that moment, and we craved it."

"When a man whose name is on the building says something that can destroy the brand, there's no playbook for that," they said.

The agency said it would create a new diversity position in response to the controversy as well as conduct an audit and commit to a certain level of diverse representation, conduct bias training work, and review campaigns to ensure they are culturally relevant.

SEE ALSO: The 9 top advertising accounts up for grabs that agency holding companies like WPP and Publicis are battling for, with billions on the line

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NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

Hi! Welcome to the Insider Advertising daily for October 16. I'm Lauren Johnson, a senior advertising reporter at Business Insider. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday. Send me feedback or tips at ljohnson@businessinsider.com.

Today's news: Inside the future of millennial-news network Cheddar, the FBI interviews former Ruder Finn employees, and the ad experts up for hire.

Read the entire story here.

The FBI probed public relations giant Ruder Finn about prospective work for the Chinese consulate, former employees say

• Sean Czarnecki reports that the FBI questioned former employees at public-relations firm Ruder Finn about work the agency pitched for the Chinese consulate.
• The FBI asked the former employees questions like who was involved from the firm and the consulate and what the potential scope of work was.
• Lobbyists and representatives for foreign governments, including PR firms, are required to register with the US government, and the US government has been stepping up enforcement of this requirement, said Joshua Rosenstein, a lawyer at Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock.

Read the full story here.

Meet 18 top advertising and marketing pros who are expert at positioning brands, persuading consumers — and are on the market

• Michael Kaminer identified 18 respected pros on the market who can help confront brand challenges in these turbulent times.
• While the pandemic has significantly cut ad spend, agencies and brands still need talent.
• The list includes agency veterans like Ed Gorman, formerly of Carat; and ex WarnerMedia CMO Chris Spadaccini.

Read the full story here.

More stories we're reading:

— Lauren

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NOW WATCH: Why electric planes haven't taken off yet

Dentsu International, a subsidiary of the Japan-based advertising and media firm Dentsu Inc, is dumping a large new office it leased late last year on Manhattan's West Side, two real-estate executives familiar with the offering told Business Insider.

Dentsu had planned to consolidate employees from four Manhattan offices into 320,000 square feet it leased late last year at the Morgan North Post Office Building by 2023. Now, Dentsu is actively looking to sublease the space, the two sources said. 

A spokeswoman for Dentsu would not confirm that the company was planning to scuttle the entirety of the space, but a spokeswoman for CBRE, the real estate services firm that is representing Dentsu in disposing of the space, stated that the planned consolidation was now off, suggesting at the very least that the location would be downsized and that the space, in total, could be on the chopping block.

Read More: AT&T is putting WarnerMedia's huge NYC headquarters under review and could decide to cut hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space.

"Dentsu is assessing their real estate footprint to be aligned with their people and business's needs in our new normal," the CBRE spokeswoman said in a statement. "With new opportunities for the future of work, they are exploring various workspace strategies including the optimization of their 950,000 square feet of office space across five locations in Manhattan."

The decision is the latest instance of a major corporate tenant scaling back its office footprint at a moment when the future of the workplace has been thrown into question thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier this week, Business Insider revealed that AT&T has expressed second thoughts about its subsidiary WarnerMedia's huge Hudson Yards headquarters, initiating a review of the space that could result in it shedding hundreds of thousands of square feet there. 

Read More: IBM is hunting for a 500,000 square foot NYC office as tech tenants continue to double down on deeply-discounted workspaces.

Meanwhile, real-estate executives say that publisher Conde Nast has signaled that it would like to downsize its roughly one million square foot headquarters at One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. The company, which is less than a decade into its 25 year lease for the space, has even begun to look at other, smaller office locations in the city in which to relocate, though it remains uncertain how it would deal with its large existing lease should it proceed with such a move.

The turnabouts show how once bullish decisions on office space have been unmoored by the pandemic, which has thrust the economy into a downturn, accelerated pre-existing business trends, and proven that workers can do their jobs remotely. The later, especially, has begun to prompt tenants to examine whether their post pandemic space needs will be slimmer.

One real-estate executive pointed at the recent leadership change at Dentsu, with Jacki Kelley taking control of its US operations, as a contributing factor in the about-face on its decision to take space in the Morgan North building. Kelley's predecessor, Nick Brien, had made the decision to lease the Ninth Avenue location but stepped down from the firm soon after.   

Read more: Companies from banks to tech giants are looking to shed huge chunks of office space. Here's a look at 8 key sublease offers — and what they mean for rents in big-city markets.

SEE ALSO: EXCLUSIVE: AT&T is putting WarnerMedia's huge NYC headquarters under review and could decide to cut hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space

SEE ALSO: Facebook scored a $100 million break on its blockbuster NYC office deal, and it could mark the start of a wave of discounts as vacancies soar

SEE ALSO: Wall Street is getting back to work. Here are the latest return-to-office plans for 6 firms, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citi.

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NOW WATCH: Why it's okay to eat the brown part of an avocado

Hi! Welcome to the Insider Advertising daily for October 19. I'm Lauren Johnson, a senior advertising reporter at Business Insider. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday. Send me feedback or tips at ljohnson@businessinsider.com.

Today's news: The New York Post's ideological split, Fox makes bid for NFL games, and Dentsu pulls back on New York office space.

Read the full story here.

Fox just made an aggressive bid for NFL football, and it could start a bidding war for one of TV's biggest prizes

• Fox has submitted its bid to renew its NFL rights contract, sources confirmed, kicking off a scramble among major media conglomerates for one of television's biggest prizes.
• The bid is believed to be in the $2 billion range, Bloomberg first reported, which is 50 percent higher than its current contract, said a source.
• The offer is said to have rankled other networks whose business has taken a hit from subscriber declines and the pandemic.

Read the full story here.

• Daniel Geiger reports that Dentsu is seeking to sublease a glitzy new office space it leased late last year on Manhattan's West Side.
• The holding company is the newest firm to contemplating the future of the physical workplace due to the economic downturn.
• Dentsu had planned to consolidate employees from four Manhattan offices into 320,000 square feet it leased late last year at the Morgan North Post Office Building by 2023. 

Read the full story here.

More stories we're reading:

— Lauren

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NOW WATCH: Why Pikes Peak is the most dangerous racetrack in America

Hi! Welcome to the Insider Advertising daily for October 20. I'm Lauren Johnson, a senior advertising reporter at Business Insider. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday. Send me feedback or tips at ljohnson@businessinsider.com.

Today's news: Edelman's revenue rebounds, how WarnerMedia markets HBO Now, and new data about YouTube's most-popular videos.

Read the full story here.

Read the full story here.

Read the full story here.

More stories we're reading:

• How Kevin Mayer, the ex-Disney executive who left to be TikTok's CEO for only 3 months, has started to mount a comeback as an investor (Business Insider)
• Apple launched an MTV-style live-streaming channel featuring exclusive music videos and interviews (Business Insider)
• Mark Zuckerberg reportedly signed off on a Facebook algorithm change that throttled traffic to progressive news sites — and one site says that quiet change cost them $400,00 to $600,000 a year (Business Insider)
• WPP back on hunt for deals, says chief (Financial Times)
• TikTok's first music hire, Mary Rahmani, joins Triller as global head of partnerships (TubeFilter)
• The Dodo, Group Nine's animal brand, is getting into pet insurance (Wall Street Journal)

— Lauren

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NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak

Kristi Argyilan, the president of Target's in-house advertising arm Roundel, is leaving the company.

Argyilan is a longtime advertising exec who has played a large role in building out Target's advertising arm that competes with Walmart, Amazon, and others. She has worked at Target since 2014 and was tapped last year from a SVP of marketing role to lead Target's advertising business. Argyilan was previously the North American president of ad-buying firm Magna Global and has held agency roles at Universal McCann, Arnold Worldwide, and Hill Holliday.

A spokesperson for Target confirmed Argyilan's departure and said that her last day would be October 30. Target will conduct an external search to fill the role. Argyilan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Her departure signals a big leadership hole for Target a year and a half into revamping its advertising business to take on Walmart and Amazon. At the same time, Walmart is also undergoing leadership changes at its advertising business. Last week, Walmart said that Walmart Media Group head exec Stefanie Jay was stepping down from her role and that Rich Lehrfeld would lead the group on an interim basis.

Target wants to compete for more ad dollars

Target is one of a handful of retailers that are betting big on advertising as retail margins get thinner. One of the ways Target differentiates its ad business is by playing up data about how people shop in brick-and-mortar stores after seeing an ad. Target then uses that data to create and target custom ad campaigns for companies like Unilever and Disney. 

Target rebranded its advertising business from Target Media Network to Roundel last year with the goal of beefing up the business and competing for shopper marketing budgets from brands. 

Under Roundel, Target has tried to pitch itself as more than a shopper marketing firm that works with external media and advertising companies. Last year, Roundel inked a data deal with Disney's linear TV channels to show Disney's advertisers if an ad drove sales at Target. Roundel also creates ad campaigns for brands that don't sell their products at Target.

E-commerce agencies note that one of the challenges of Target's advertising business is that its e-commerce sales are not as big as Walmart or Amazon — though the coronavirus has bumped up Target's digital sales. Target's digital sales grew 141% during the first-quarter of 2020, according to Target's earnings.

"Our clients that sell in Target's brick-and-mortar stores love Target but their e-comm is not where it needs to be," said Laura Meyer, the founder and CEO of the Amazon-focused ad agency Envision Horizons. "I think it's going to take a massively expensive overhaul and investment to be able to create a more optimized, digital shopping experience."

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NOW WATCH: Why electric planes haven't taken off yet

Tesla, famously or infamously, doesn't really spend any money on advertising. Contrast that with the traditional auto industry, which, for decades, has been among the biggest and most reliable ad spenders on the planet. In the "Mad Men" era, it was possible to devote an entire career to the Buick account and retire happily.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk isn't exactly anti-advertising; several years ago, on a quarterly earnings conference call, he even speculated that Tesla would eventually develop an ad budget, because that would support the media and media — journalism — needs support.

I'm not sure if he feels the same way these days, but he has certainly discovered the value of so-called "earned" media: the positive messaging around your products or services that satisfied customers offer on their own, without any prompting. Think of people posting Instagram photos of their Teslas, accompanied by rave reviews.

Other categories are "paid" and "owned." Paid is the old-school stuff: TV, print, radio, billboards, and now digital and social. It is what it sounds like; a company buys it, and these days, that often means giving money to Facebook or Google.

Owned is advertising that belongs to the advertiser and that they control. Tesla has sort of engaged in this practice. Think of the red Tesla Roadster that Musk's other company, SpaceX, put into orbit in 2018. Or, more recently, of astronauts headed for the International Space Station in a SpaceX capsule getting a ride to their rocket in a Tesla Model X.

Opting for more old-school advertising has been a topic at Tesla before, but without much success. It's easy to see why. Here are 10 times when Musk proved ads are pointless for Tesla:

FOLLOW US: On Facebook for more car and transportation content!

Musk sends his personal, red Tesla Roadster to the red planet.

The marketing stunt to end all marketing stunts. While General Motors might spend billions convincing people to buy Chevys, the company can't easily send Chevys into orbit.

The Falcon Heavy rocket that SpaceX launched in 2018 required a dummy payload, and Musk decided that a Tesla vehicle would be ideal. His very own red original Roadster, in fact.

The car, piloted by a space-suited "Starman," was released once the launch cleared Earth's gravity well, to the strains of David Bowie, with the words "Don't Panic" displayed on the car's infotainment screen — a reference to Douglas Adams' book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a Musk favorite. 

Tesla designs ventilators to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ford and General Motors teamed up with, respectively, GE Healthcare and a ventilators maker called Ventec soon after concerns emerged that an upwelling in COVID-19 patients would exhaust the limited US supply of ventilators. 

Tesla also jumped into the fray, with engineers repurposing auto parts to produce prototype ventilators that could be quickly manufactured.

Boring Company hats, raising $1 million for Musk's tunneling side project.

Musk got stuck in Los Angeles traffic a few years back and was so incensed that he started a tunneling concern, the Boring Company, to dig tunnels under congested freeways to speed up transit. 

The company raised a cool $1 million in 2018 by selling hats. Later, it raised more by selling flamethrowers.

None of this was directly about Tesla, but it continued to brand Musk as a daring, problem-solving, irreverent innovator.

Tesla's market capitalization booms relative to the competition.

Tesla's best free advertising comes from Wall Street and investors' obsession with the upstart automaker's growth story. Every single trading day is a potential Tesla promotion.

As such, Tesla is now financially far, far larger than GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles combined.

Musk and Grimes give their baby an unusual name.

Musk is a weird sort of geek celebrity, but he has been married (twice) to actress Talulah Riley, and recently had a son, named "X Æ A-12," with musician Grimes. The birth was widely covered.

All the while, Tesla was restarting its operations in China after a coronavirus shutdown and SpaceX was readying the first launch of astronauts to the International Space Station from American soil since the end of the Space Shuttle program.

Musk was too busy to think about advertising, so he just made news himself.

Musk talks to Joe Rogan and smokes some pot. Millions talk about nothing else for days.

Before Joe Rogan inked a $100-million deal with Spotify, he and Elon Musk broke YouTube with two hours of podcast in which Musk covered a lot of conversational ground and puffed on a large joint.

Not something that Henry Ford probably would have done, but it again bolstered Musk's renegade reputation among his vast fan base, many of whom are also huge Roganites.

Musk's 2015 Sorbonne speech, in which he called for a carbon tax.

Somewhat a fading memory now, but in 2015, Musk conjoined Tesla's mission to accelerate humanity's exit from the fossil-fuel era with a pre-Trumpian US commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement.

Musk called for a carbon tax back then, taking Tesla's guiding philosophy and marrying it to the imperative to fight global warming through massive government policy. In typical fashion, Musk showed that he — and Tesla — cared about far more than just selling cars.

But showing that they cared about more than selling cars ... helped Tesla sell a lot more cars. By the end of 2019, it had delivered almost 250,000.

Tesla merges with SolarCity and Musk introduces the Tesla Solar Roof.

As with the Sorbonne speech, Musk used the 2016 takeover of then-struggling SolarCity — he was chairman, and his cousins had started the company — to extend Tesla's green credentials. 

At an event in Los Angeles, Tesla revealed its Solar Roof, a high-end product that combined energy gathering with Tesla's already-existing electric-vehicle and energy-storage businesses.

It followed that if you wanted a Tesla roof, you'd consider a Tesla car and a Tesla battery pack. Synergy!

Musk takes the Steve Jobs presentation to a new level.

Tesla doesn't do Apple-like presentations — it does raucous, rock-concert-like product reveals that put the competition to shame. 

Musk is the emcee and ringmaster. He plays the role of 21st-century Thomas Edison to the max, firing up fans and getting the media to broadcast, comment on, and document the whole experience, all for the cost of an open bar and a great light show.

Musk is a real-life superhero.

Musk was the model for Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark character in the "Iron Man" movies, so every time the MCU took to the screen and Iron Man was included, Musk and Tesla benefited from reminders that the "real" Tony Stark was hard at work in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, remaking the world.

British frozen-foods grocer Iceland Foods sent a chicken nugget into space for the first time in history.

To celebrate its 50th anniversary last week, Iceland hired space marketing company Sent Into Space for the marketing stunt.

The company launched the nugget to an altitude of 110,000 feet, or 20.7 miles, into the region known as near space. This is the height of roughly 880,000 Iceland chicken nuggets, Iceland claims.

The nugget made it roughly a third of the way to outer space, which begins at around 62 miles above Earth.

"The nugget spent an hour floating up and around in space,"Sent Into Space said, but the nugget was "unbothered" by the low pressure and temperatures that can dip down to -85 degrees Fahrenheit.

The nugget then rocketed back down to Earth at 200 miles per hour, Iceland Foods said, and its parachute opened at roughly 12 miles above ground level.

Sent Into Space launched the nugget from a farm near Iceland's headquarters in North Wales, and it took just under two hours to reach its destination. The nugget was carried by a gas-filled weather balloon with a satellite tracking system so that the company could monitor its location. An integrated camera filmed the nugget's journey.

Read more:How brands should be marketing to the $143 billion Gen Z market if they want their products to go wild on social media

The grocer joked that the nugget "left behind grey skies, COVID-19, Brexit, and Piers Morgan" to enjoy "momentary peace, clearer skies, spacecraft, and possible sightings of the world's highest flying birds such as the Rüppell's Vulture and the Common Crane."

Iceland Foods, which is the UK's ninth-biggest grocer with around 950 stores, specializes in frozen food and sells more than 60 varieties of private-label breaded chicken products. It sold more than 10 million chicken products in the first week of October alone.

Sent Into Space has previously launched other food into space including fish and chips, a pasty, and pancakes.

In October, NASA launched 10 bottles of skincare serum by beauty giant Estée Lauder into space for a photoshoot. The company paid NASA around $128,000 to take pictures of the product from the International Space Station as part of NASA's efforts to promote commercial opportunities in space.

SEE ALSO: NASA gave Nokia $14.1 million to build a 4G network on the moon

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NOW WATCH: Why thoroughbred horse semen is the world's most expensive liquid

Hi! Welcome to the Insider Advertising daily for October 22. I'm Lauren Johnson, a senior advertising reporter at Business Insider. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday. Send me feedback or tips at ljohnson@businessinsider.com.

Today's news: Quibi shuts down six months after launching, how Procter & Gamble's ads tackle gender and social inequality, and Vice Media's Nancy Dubuc warns publishers of Google and Facebook's efforts to fund news.

Read the full story here.

Read the full story here.

Read the full story here.

More stories we're reading:

— Lauren

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NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

In the early days of television, advertisers and networks learned the hard way that honesty and transparency were essential to a functioning media.

After sponsors and networks got caught colluding to rig popular quiz shows like "The $64,000 Question" in the 1950s, both sides accepted that it was in their best interest not to trifle with the public's trust. In the long run, they realized, you can't sell products to people who've been conditioned to view everything they see on TV with skepticism and disgust.

That understanding remained a bedrock principle throughout the evolution of 20th century media, even holding firm in the early days of the internet. Though each side aggressively represented its own interests — brands would always like the media to push their wares a bit harder; media would always like advertisers to spend more and ask for less control — they have always settled on acceptable rules of engagement for each new frontier.

But in the digital age, communication channels have evolved far beyond the control of advertisers and media companies. Digital media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube have upended the classic dichotomy by enabling the viewer to also become the writer, director, and producer. With the general public thus empowered, mainstream advertisers inevitably — and unwittingly — found themselves funding hateful, dangerous, or just plain untrustworthy content.

Naturally, sponsors pressured these social media companies to clean up their act. Those companies responded with "brand safety" protocols that allowed them to continue running user-generated content without sacrificing the advertiser dollars that fueled their astonishing growth.

But it hasn't been enough. As political and social tensions have reached a fever pitch in the US, the public is increasingly holding brands, media companies, and social media platforms responsible for the content they choose to elevate — unwittingly or otherwise. What we are now seeing is the nightmare feared in the 1950s: Consumers don't know whom to trust, and they are taking advertisers to task for bankrolling the chaos.

So far, advertiser efforts to address the situation have proved about as effective as those "brand safety" protocols. The #StopHateforProfit boycott of Facebook this summer reportedly drained the platform of millions of dollars in revenue. But the effort fizzled once advertisers realized the boycott was doing more damage to their own bottom line that it was to Facebook's.

It's a frustrating and unsustainable new reality. But there is a way out. The good news is that the solution depends on technology that already exists. The bad news is that it requires marketers to once again assume responsibility for building a safe and trustworthy media environment.

A call for marketers to measure their advertising's social impact

As advertisers, we need to change the mathematical models we use to value media. We need to evolve our valuation and measurement so they place a premium not just on reach, viewability, and effectiveness, but on social and environmental impact. We need to be willing to pay more for clicks that help boost a stable society, not just our quarterly reports.

In addition to cost-per-impression, we need to be measuring cost-per-social contribution. We need to start factoring a media placement's carbon footprint into our ad pricing. We need to support publishers that reach more diverse audiences, even if those publishers don't yet provide the level of audience data we've grown accustomed to. And we need to do this with more than the usual 10% experimental budget.

This means the introduction of new tools that empower marketers to consider these sorts of ethical and moral consequences when buying media. Just as ESG investing and sustainable funds have become billion-dollar businesses on Wall Street, we believe that socially conscious media buying will find an enthusiastic audience among advertisers.

Some people in our industry may consider that naïve. But we believe that marketers understand the necessity of a functioning, trustworthy media to their own bottom line. If we are willing to pay twice the price for an impression that improves our click-through rate from 0.1% to 0.2%, shouldn't we be able to muster the will to pay more for an ad that's likely to produce a net positive good for the planet overall? That is the $64,000 question, and, in 2020, I'd like to think we already know the answer.

Christian Juhl is global CEO of GroupM, a part of WPP and the world's largest media investment company.

SEE ALSO: As TV giants push their legacy businesses to the background, it may be time for them to embrace selling like Facebook and Google do

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NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

Hi! Welcome to the Insider Advertising daily for October 23. I'm Lauren Johnson, a senior advertising reporter at Business Insider. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday. Send me feedback or tips at ljohnson@businessinsider.com.

Today's news: Quibi's investors want their money back, Facebook's Carolyn Everson talks about the recent advertiser boycott, and GroupM global CEO Christian Juhl makes the case for a new ad model.

Read the full story here.

• Tanya Dua reports that Facebook's VP of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson said the advertiser boycott against the company made it her "most difficult summer" professionally.
• "Given the vast reach of 3 billion people …[Facebook] was under a very critical microscope, as we should be," Everson said while speaking at the Association of National Advertisers' Masters of Marketing conference yesterday.
• Everson said Facebook had already been tackling hate and misinformation but that the boycott ramped up its efforts with initiatives such as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), an industry effort to set common standards for digital safety.

Read the full story here.

Read the full story here.

More stories we're reading:

— Lauren

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NOW WATCH: July 15 is Tax Day — here's what it's like to do your own taxes for the very first time

Hi! Welcome to the Insider Advertising daily for October 26. I'm Lauren Johnson, a senior advertising reporter at Business Insider. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday. Send me feedback or tips at LJohnson@businessinsider.com.

Today's news: How Quibi fell apart, inside The Richard Group's troubles, and the execs leading the e-commerce advertising industry.

• Mobile content app Quibi, backed by $1.75 billion and some of Hollywood's top names, launched in April and died in October. 
• Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman led the company, which missed warning signs and took costly missteps in the leadup to and after its debut. 
• Rob Price, Meghan Morris, and Becky Peterson tracked the buildup to and aftermath of Quibi's ill-fated launch. 

Read the entire story here.

• Patrick Coffee and Tanya Dua report that independent ad agency The Richards Group is facing steep revenue and staff losses after founder Stan Richards made racist comments that led several clients to fire the firm.
• Insiders said there have been other racially tinged incidents at the agency, including a late 2019 one where staff parodied Asian cuisine. Some connected those episodes to the agency's rigid, traditional culture that included strict check-in times, no paid parental leave until mid-2019, and all-male retreats with the founder. 
• Stan Richards defended his approach to running the agency and blamed his exit on company leaks and the media.

Read the full story here.

E-commerce is skyrocketing during the pandemic while traditional ad budgets shrink. Meet the 8 insiders at places like Walmart, Amazon, and CVS tasked with turning retail into big ad businesses

• Advertising has been a bright spot during the pandemic for retailers as e-commerce shopping takes off.
• I identified the eight people leading advertising at the retailers. They include Walmart Media Group's Rich Lehrfeld and Instacart's Seth Dallaire.
• Amazon has long been the biggest ad platform but Walmart, CVS, Rite Aid and others want to challenge its dominance by pitching advertisers things like more granular data and new audiences.

Read the full story here.

More stories we're reading:

— Lauren

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NOW WATCH: Why it's okay to eat the brown part of an avocado

Ad holding company Interpublic Group has launched a new consulting firm to help CMOs scrambling to navigate the pandemic and fend off giant consulting companies that are increasingly moving in on ad agencies' turf.

Black Glass is trying to capitalize on the growing role of data in marketing; marketing's expansion to nontraditional tactics; and the shift to project work. Its pitch is that it can help clients make fast business decisions using IPG's data hub Acxiom among other outside data sources, financial modeling and a network of internal and external experts. One client it named, BMW, said it's using Black Glass to tweak its 2021 advertising budget and save money on agency fees. 

Founder and CEO Katie Klumper said she believes her consulting and agency experience (she was a principal at Deloitte Digital and president at agency KBS) positions Black Glass well to understand brands' needs.

One of those is the shift to project work. While traditional consulting firms are known to charge hourly rates for months-long projects, Black Glass has a tiered membership model is designed to do projects lasting six to eight weeks, Klumper said.

"Marketers have been talking about being consumer-centric for a long time, but I truly believe that there is no CMO-centric solution out there that is purpose-built for them," Klumper told Business Insider. "While this has been a pressing need for years, the pandemic has really brought home just how important it is for brands to respond rigorously and rapidly to changing marketplace conditions."

Read Black Glass's full pitch deck here

IPG's move comes as consulting giants like Accenture and Deloitte are trying to do more traditional ad agency work while other ad agencies like Omnicom and Dentsu Aegis Network-owned 360i  and other startups are pitching consulting businesses.

To that end, agencies have also scooped up consulting execs in recent months, such as Ogilvy, which named Andy Main, the former head of Deloitte Digital, as its global CEO this summer.

Black Glass also expands IPG's offerings at a time of economic uncertainty. IPG's third-quarter net revenue declined 5.2% year over year to $1.95 billion.  

"The CMO has become more of a business-oriented leader where marketing is just one of the domains, so it's an appropriate move for agencies to look to help their CMO clients beyond the marketing campaigns," Forrester consultant Jay Pattisall said. "One of the biggest problems plaguing agencies is that they come too late in the process. This is a good move that gives them the opportunity to have more of a strategic voice upstream and not be pigeonholed into just executing marketing campaigns."

IPG has invested close to $5 million into the consulting group, and plans to grow that over time, company spokesman Tom Cunningham told Business Insider. 

SEE ALSO: 'Disruption only happens to those that are unprepared': Media agencies are fighting back by increasingly taking a page out of consulting firms' playbook

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In late 2019, executives from PF Chang's China Bistro came by The Richards Group's office after the ad agency won their business. 

The Dallas-based agency was known to regularly host games to entertain clients and visitors, and this one featured agency employees parodying Asian dishes. Agency leaders asked everyone to chant "I'm not eating that!" at the end of each description.

The blowback in the building was immediate, with employees calling the event "tone-deaf" and "racist." 

Founder Stan Richards built the business over 44 years by creating classic campaigns like Motel 6's "We'll leave the light on." Today, it's the largest independent agency in the US, with some 600 employees and around $200 million in revenue last year.

But now its founder is out and the agency faces steep losses in the wake of racist comments Richards made earlier this month, calling a proposed ad campaign for Motel 6 "too Black."

According to more than 10 current and former employees who spoke to Business Insider, episodes like the Motel 6 and PF Chang's ones stemmed from a rigid, old-school workplace.

Some of them said that the agency has fallen behind as the industry has begun reckoning with its lack of gender and racial equality and that its future remains uncertain.

Subscribe to read the full story: Inside the biggest independent ad agency, The Richards Group, where some say an old-school culture that included all-male retreats fueled racism and sexism.

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Following Microsoft's, Google's, and Amazon's lead, Facebook is the latest tech giant to push into the burgeoning market of cloud-based video games.

The social media conglomerate announced as much on Monday: Five games make up the starting lineup, and they can be played via stream through Facebook, on smartphones, tablets, and computers.

But why is Facebook getting involved in video game streaming?

The answer, unsurprisingly, may be core to Facebook's business: Ad sales.

Like Facebook itself, the new game streaming service is a test bed for serving ads — games are just the way to get people using the tech, and to test its limits.

"Building on our HTML5 playable ads format, we're launching cloud playable ads," Facebook vice president of play Jason Rubin wrote in the announcement. "With this new format, we can now support interactive demos from a game's native code, blurring the line between games and ads."

These aren't your standard video advertisement, but playable ads that offer interactivity with whatever game is being advertised. As Facebook puts it: "Cloud playable ads are cloud-hosted interactive ads that provide an authentic preview of a full game."

Rather than having to download a free version, or a demo, people can instantly play whatever game is being advertised. 

The social media giant imagines a future where, while scrolling through Facebook, you see an ad for the next major "Call of Duty" that offers you an instant opportunity to play a level of the game's campaign.

In this hypothetical, Facebook would get the advertising spend from "Call of Duty" publisher Activision, the publisher would get potential buyers to try its big new game, and Facebook users would get to try out a big new game before buying it.

You might see those ads through the Facebook Gaming portal, or you might see them on your Facebook news feed (or both). 

Notably, the lineup of games that can be streamed through Facebook Gaming is small, and so far consist entirely of mobile games already available on various devices. That's by design, according to Rubin.

"To start out, we decided to go with existing games and expand their reach,"he told Business Insider. "I would say, please don't look at these first five titles and think that's all we have."

"A year from now, it will look much more diverse," Rubin added.

At the moment, it's unclear what Facebook's long-term strategy is for its cloud-gaming service. It has no apparent monthly subscription price — unlike Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass, Google's Stadia, or Amazon's Luna — and the games available on the service are all free.

But video game streaming may be a way of expanding a new advertising product. Facebook and Google accounted for a majority of digital advertising in 2019, according to eMarketer, and advertising is a core part of Facebook's business model.

The new games service, then, like Facebook itself, would be paid for through advertising. Players become usage data which becomes grist for the advertising mill that Facebook's business is built on.

Got a tip? Contact Business Insider senior correspondent Ben Gilbert via email (bgilbert@businessinsider.com), or Twitter DM (@realbengilbert). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by email only, please.

SEE ALSO: Facebook just dropped details of its secretive cloud gaming service – including 5 titles users will be able to play in-app this week

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Facebook's decision to ban new campaign advertising ahead of Election Day has left digital campaign strategists irritated and exasperated. The ad ban is a mere public relations gimmick that would do little to stop disinformation on the social network, operatives who specialize in targeting voters online told Insider.

And they fear it could hurt down-ballot candidates for whom the final days towards November 3 are crucial when voters start paying closer attention to local races.

Facebook announced the changes in September, saying the new rule would help combat disinformation closer to Election Day. They strengthened the scope of the ban on October 7, barring any political ads after the polls officially close. As the results are counted, Facebook will display notifications at the top of people's news feed to keep them updated on the state of the race. The company also said it would move to remove ads that prematurely claim victory.

But the social network leaves a huge window for the kind of disinformation the platform says it's trying to protect against to reach voters anyway. The ad ban would take effect weeks after millions of people have already voted by mail, and critics say it would be too little too late. 

"This is a PR stunt to distract from Facebook's miserable record for allowing really dangerous information to flourish on their platforms," said Eli Kaplan, a founder of the Democratic digital firm Rising Tide Interactive.

Democrats often feel disadvantaged on Facebook in particular.  Their strategists worry that instead of slowing disinformation, the changes would hamper their ability to counter false information spread on Facebook through organic posts — made by individual users and groups that aren't boosted by ad money —  in the final week of the election. 

A powerful network of conservative personalities, media outlets, and pages that have huge followings and routinely rank among the top-performing posts from US Facebook pages, dominate the network's news rounds and effectively spread right-leaning viewpoints.

"From an advertising perspective, if Trump is pushing disinformation, paid ads are our best way to push to swing voters to correct the record," one Democratic online fundraising strategist told Insider.  "I feel like this is such a hollow move, but in aggregate it's very unfair to the Democratic Party."

But the Trump campaign also says the decision could hurt its efforts and has labeled Facebook's changes an attack by the "Silicon Valley Mafia."

Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager told Insider that the social network was "silencing the President at the most important time of all."

A big loophole

Facebook is not banning all political and issue ads from its platform in the waning days of the election. Rather, it will not allow any new political ads to launch starting October 27, through Election Day.

That means that campaigns must get their advertisements rolling before the deadline, but they can program them to run through November 3. Advertisers can also adjust their audience targeting during that blackout period.

In a lengthy post announcing the platform changes — which also include a beefed-up Voter Information Center and a partnership with Reuters to verify results — Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote that "in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new claims. So in the week before the election, we won't accept new political or issue ads."

What concerns Democrats more, Kaplan said, is that old fashioned organic content — made by individual users and pages, pumped into people's news feeds and amplified through shares, likes, and comments — play the biggest role in spreading disinformation, rather than ads.

For example, President Donald Trump has repeatedly and baselessly cast doubt on the security of mail-in voting using both his Twitter and Facebook accounts, which have tens of millions of followers. Facebook users would still be permitted to see and share that content during election week. Facebook and Twitter have begun to attach warning labels that direct users to reliable information to problematic Trump posts, but the posts themselves remain up.

'They'll just get their ads loaded up beforehand"

Digital strategists were skeptical that Facebook's new ad rule would have any meaningful impact on the way campaigns approached advertising.

"I don't think it's going to have an effect for very sophisticated campaigns," Kaplan said. "They'll just get their ads loaded up beforehand...We know what audiences to hit with what ads, and we can make decisions on day 8 and adjust those budgets in real time."

The Democratic online fundraiser who talked to Insider said his campaigns would simply keep the texts of their ads more generic than usual.

"As much as Democrats hate Facebook, we feel like we have no choice but to run ads on their platforms," he said. 

Facebook is especially vital for raising money, he said, as it allows campaigns to build up their email lists and target hyper-specific constituencies using data about voters they already possessed.

Both Democratic strategists who talked to Insider acknowledged the rule change could hinder a candidate's ability to tout any last-minute endorsements, or target voters in swing states with fact-checks if an opponent circulated false or inaccurate information about them.

Kaplan warned that smaller races, which he said often begin using Facebook later in a cycle, could also face repercussions. "There are a lot of down-ballot campaigns that get their stuff together really late and it's one of the last things that people get to," he said.

Vincent Harris, a longtime Republican digital strategist in Texas, told Insider that campaigns large and small should simply "plan ahead and use Facebook," which he called "the best use of campaign money this cycle."

Plenty of other places on the internet for campaign ads

With Facebook narrowing opportunities to reach voters with ads in the last week of the election, digital strategists told Insider that they would likely shift ad spending elsewhere during the final week of the campaign.

There are plenty of other places on the internet to serve ads to voters such as YouTube, Google, and targeting voters online based on cookies and other user data when they visit websites. Campaigns will also deploy their email lists, which remain a powerful way to fundraise and get a message out in the closing stretches.

Harris told Insider that while Facebook remained the most valuable platform in this election cycle, his team was also experimenting with other options like Parler, a conservative social network that draws heavily from Twitter in its design.

Facebook would also remain a priority for Democrats, and their campaigns would have to work within the social media giant's parameters.

"I think it further underscores how much power Facebook has over the entire global ecosystem," the Democratic strategist said.

SEE ALSO: Inside Joe Biden's strategy to energize supporters who play Nintendo's 'Animal Crossing,' where lawn signs, T-shirts, and virtual voting booths are hot commodities

SEE ALSO: Biden campaign desperate for digital access to students as college campuses remain closed and students don't know where they'll be on Election Day

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Financial communications has thrived in the pandemic as companies scramble for help fending off shareholder activists, dealing with mergers and acquisitions, and creating SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies.

Business Insider identified some of the top financial communications pros through a combination of original reporting, nominations, and publicly available information.

They come from established firms and startup agencies and range from bankruptcy specialists like FTI Consulting's Rachel Chesley, who has handled 22 Chapter 11 cases so far in 2020, to Joele Frank, who is known for helping firms fend off hostile takeovers.

They also include newcomers like Jessica Schaefer, who carved out a niche connecting financial services companies with influencers.

We chose people based on assignments they've handled, the caliber of their clients, revenue growth, and other factors.

Read on to see the full list, sorted alphabetically by last name.

SEE ALSO: Meet public relations' 27 most influential fixers at companies like Google, Johnson & Johnson, and Nike

Paul Caminiti, founding partner, Reevemark

Paul Caminiti founded the 15-person firm in 2018 with other Sard Verbinnen vets with a focus on public affairs and financial communications.

This past year, Caminiti has counseled prominent financial firms and corporations like Trian Partners and Chesapeake Energy, which resulted in several millions of dollars of revenue for the firm.

For Trian, Caminiti led the PR team supporting the activist investor group's campaign to merge Invesco and Janus Henderson. He also helped Chesapeake Energy with its $4 billion acquisition of WildHorse, commercial litigation issues, and Chapter 11 restructuring.

Rachel Chesley, managing director, FTI Consulting

Restructurings are up this year as the coronavirus pandemic stalls the economy, making Rachel Chesley a go-to for corporations trying to spin these maneuvers.

She's handled 22 Chapter 11 cases so far in 2020, as well as a number of out-of-court engagements.

For example, Chesley led PR strategy for LATAM Airlines' Chapter 11 filing, GNC's bankruptcy as it sold itself to Harbin Pharmaceutical and closed up to 1,200 stores, and news publisher McClatchy's highly publicized restructuring.

Andrew Cole, co-president, Sard Verbinnen & Co

Andrew Cole, who has been with the company since 1998, became co-president in 2016, and has helped it push nto analytics, corporate governance, digital, and government relations, which led to the firm's highest revenue ever last year with more than 600 clients.

In terms of client work, Cole has handled high-profile transactions in recent years like Takeda Pharmaceuticals' $62 billion acquisition of Shire and the Japanese pharmaceutical company's becoming listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Healthcare work has been a bright spot in the pandemic; Cole handled Moderna's IPO and is helping get the word out about its vaccine candidate.

Cole also worked with Providence Equity Partners on its long-term corporate positions and transaction announcements and helped eBay when it dropped PayPal.

Jonathan Doorley, partner of financial situations, Brunswick Group

Brunswick Group recruited Jonathan Doorley to revamp its mergers and acquisitions unit, filling in a void created when senior executives exited the agency.

With Doorley's help, Brunswick Group has regained some of its momentum. He advised 7-Eleven on its $21 billion acquisition of Speedway, LVMH on its $16 billion bid for Tiffany, and Xerox on its hostile bid for HP.

Previously, Doorley spent 10 years at Sard Verbinnen, rising to partner.

"[Doorley's] a young guy who has quickly ascended to the top of arguably the two most high-profile and powerful financial PR firms in the world," said a former colleague. "If that happens once, people can chalk it up to luck. But when it happens twice, you know it's based on real substance and talent."

Richard Dukas, chairman and CEO, Dukas Linden Public Relations

Under Dukas, Dukas Linden grew its revenue 17% in 2019 to $6.32 million, and despite the pandemic, the agency projects fourth-quarter billings will top the year-ago period.

Highlights this year included supporting Cathie Wood as the CEO of Ark Investment Management made the case for Tesla being a bull stock. Dukas Linden used its media chops to help Wood get coverage on CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and more. During that time, Tesla went on a bull run that saw its stock increase 400%.

Dukas Linden has a dedicated broadcast group, which secures an average of 500 segments per year. Other clients include Raymond James, Neuberger Berman, and MetLife Investment Manager.

Joele Frank, managing partner, Joele Frank

Joele Frank has claimed a significant portion of the mergers and acquisitions and shareholder activism defense part of PR. 

Frank and her colleagues have defended companies against hostile takeovers by Carl Icahn more than 30 times, Starboard more than 40 times, and Pershing Square at least 10 times. She personally has been involved in more than 1,000 engagements, which also include crisis and litigation support.

In M&A, she's represented Teva Pharmaceuticals in its offer to acquire Mylan and its acquisition of Allergan Generics and Time Warner in its defense against 21st Century Fox. In 2020, she defended HP Inc. against Xerox's $34 billion unsolicited proposal and GrubHub's $7.3 billion acquisition of Just East Takeaway.com.

Frank also has a restructuring and bankruptcy practice and her firm claims to do investor and PR work for more than 40% of its clients.

Jonathan Gasthalter, managing partner, Gasthalter & Co.

Jonathan Gasthalter built Sard Verbinnen & Co.'s hedge fund practice, with clients like the $12 billion SAC Capital Advisors, and a reputation as an "iron-fisted gatekeeper," according to Institutional Investor.

After Sard Verbinnen sold a 40% stake to Golden Gate Capital, Gasthalter bucked against a noncompete clause and left to found his own agency, taking 25 of his clients and three Sard Verbinnen employees. Today, Gasthalter & Co. has 14 employees in New York and Chicago.

Bloomberg named Gasthalter & Co. one of the top PR advisers for activist investors in its annual review of activism advisers. Gasthalter & Co. worked on 24 engagements for the first half of 2020.

Gasthalter is well-known as a spokesperson for billionaires SAC Capital Advisors owner Steve Cohen, who has been trying to buy the New York Mets; and Jim Pallotta, who used to own a stake in the Boston Celtics.

Gasthalter's portfolio goes beyond activism. It helped Pivotal Investment Corp. when it merged with XL Fleet; and online casino company Rush Street Interactive in its merger with dMY technology group.

Steve Lipin, chairman and CEO, Gladstone Place Partners

Steve Lipin left Brunswick Group in 2017 to establish financial communications-focused Gladstone Place Partners and landed a plum account right off the bat, advising Walt Disney Corp. in its acquisition of a chunk of 21st Century Fox's assets.

More recently, Lipin has worked on several of investor Michael Klein's special purpose acquisition company deals like Churchill Capital Corp III's merger with MultiPlan as the healthcare data analytics company went public. Lipin also worked on Sycamore when it withdrew its bid for Victoria's Secret.

At Brunswick, Lipin worked on blockbuster M&A deals like InBev's acquisition of Anheuser-Busch, the merger of Kraft and Heinz, and Marriott's acquisition of Starwood.

Lipin, a former finance editor at The Wall Street Journal, has also defended the likes of Heinz and eBay against investor campaigns.

Greg Marose, cofounder and partner, Profile Advisors

Edelman vet Greg Marose cofounded a new crisis and financial communications boutique, Profile Advisors, in 2018.

He's advised clients involved in more than 50 activist campaigns, more than 30 distressed debt restructurings, and more than 30 litigation matters, helping boost the firm's annual revenues to about $3 million.

He's counseled a bondholder group handling debt restructuring for Puerto Rico, Leon Cooperman's Omega Advisors during the Sears bankruptcy, and shareholders of Marathon Petroleum in their campaign to push out the energy company's CEO and chairman.

After the pandemic shattered the capital markets, Marose helped investment funds communicate with uneasy investors.

This year, Profile has doubled its number of investor-side activism assignments to 16. It projects it will grow its number of bankruptcies and lawsuits by 50% this year.

Jennifer Prosek, CEO, Prosek Partners

In the years after the 2008 financial crisis, financial services companies have tried to win back the public trust that was damaged by practices like excessive compensation.

Jennifer Prosek built a business telling banks like Goldman Sachs they should advocate for themselves more, an approach that helped Prosek Partners vault to the forefront of financial communications and grow revenue on average 16% for the past three years.

Prosek has handled her share of crises as well. She advised Bridgewater Associates when the hedge fund settled a pay dispute with former co-CEO Eileen Murray. She also helped Steve Schwartzman, CEO of The Blackstone Group, on his book launch last year.

In recent years, Prosek has done more business around transactions like mergers and acquisitions after hiring Teneo and Finsbury vet Andy Merrill as a partner in 2015. 

Jessica Schaefer, CEO, Bevel

At Bevel, which she founded in 2017, Jessica Schaefer has carved out a niche helping finance and tech companies strike partnerships with celebrities and athletes.

For example, Schaefer helped fintech company Acorns promote a partnership with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, securing more than 125 articles and placements for Acorns on industry lists like WSJ's Top 25 Companies to Watch, Forbes' Fintech 50, and Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies.

Other clients have included financial firms like Greycroft, Point72 Ventures, and Torch Capital, as well as nonprofit Kiva, Dirty Lemon, and crypto trading firm Tagomi.

Alex Stanton, CEO, Stanton PR

For 10 years, Alex Stanton has helped spin the media for clients including Bain Capital, FFL Partners, and other prominent private equity groups seeking help in areas like deal and fundraising announcements, reputation, and crisis.

In 2019, he worked on 50 mergers and acquisitions including Anthem's acquisition of Beacon Health and Great Hill Partners' acquisition of G/O Media, according to the Observer. So far this year he's worked on financial restructurings for eight companies.

Previously, Stanton was co-owner of Dorf & Stanton Communications, which was sold to Shandwick and folded into Interpublic Group's Weber Shandwick.

Lex Suvanto, global managing director of financial communications and capital markets, Edelman

Lex Suvanto oversees a 150-person practice that grew revenue 33% year-over-year in 2019 and 20% year-over-year so far in 2020.

Under Suvanto, the unit worked on 66 mergers and acquisitions last year, which were collectively worth $82.7 billion in value, according to Mergermarket.

Suvanto helped Global Blue as the tourism shopping tax refund company sold itself to a special purpose acquisition company, advised Silver Lake through leadership changes and its investment strategy, and advised Applied Therapeutics after a fraudulent report circulated on social media and dragged down its stock price.

Jim Wilkinson, chairman and CEO, TrailRunner International

Since launching TrailRunner International in 2016, Jim Wilkinson has been the communications brains behind prominent IPOs like Dropbox, Spotify, and Levi's, growing revenue almost 50% so far this year.

Bain Capital has relied on Wilkinson since the early 2010s, and most recently using him as it moved to take Chinese data company ChinData public.

Previously, Wilkinson was head of communications at PepsiCo, head of international corporate affairs at Alibaba during its record-breaking IPO, and chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson during the financial crisis. The New York Times reported Wilkinson had a reputation as a "shrewd political adviser."

Dan Zacchei, president of special situations, Sloane & Company

In the past three years, Dan Zacchei has more than doubled Sloane & Company's revenue for its special situations group, handling friendly and hostile mergers, shareholder activism campaigns, restructurings, and crises — and helping the firm get ranked first by Bloomberg in total market cap of the engagements it handled.

As the pandemic slashes stock prices and investors grow wary of leadership at their portfolio companies, Zacchei is helping nearly a dozen clients prepare for shareholder activism and hostile takeovers.

They include Cubic Corp, which is defending itself against a hostile bid from Elliott Management; and Cannae Holdings and Senator Investment Group in their hostile bid for CoreLogic. He's also helping Revlon with litigation and debt issues.

Zacchei has been advising CVS Health since its $69 billion merger with Aetna, and Puerto Rico in its restructuring.

Hi! Welcome to the Insider Advertising daily for October 29. I'm Lauren Johnson, a senior advertising reporter at Business Insider. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday. Send me feedback or tips at LJohnson@businessinsider.com.

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Ad holding company Interpublic Group has launched a new consulting firm called Black Glass to help chief marketing officers grow their businesses while fending off consulting firms that are encroaching on agencies' turf.

IPG said it's invested close to $5 million into the consulting group, whose pitch is that it can help clients like BMW make fast decisions using IPG's data hub Acxiom, other data sources, financial modeling, and a network of internal and external experts.

Black Glass is trying to capitalize on the rise of data's role in business, the expansion of the CMO role, and clients' shift to project-based work.

It charge using a tiered membership model and works on timelines lasting six to eight weeks as opposed to traditional consulting firms charging hourly rates for months-long projects, said former Deloitte Digital exec and Black Glass's founder and CEO Katie Klumper.

"The holding companies are really focused on advertising, which is only about 25% of a CMO's job," Klumper told Business Insider. "There's a whole 75% as it relates to distribution, pricing, product assortment and growth strategies that all then impact the advertising. The most questions we get from CMOs are around investment strategy and structure."

Here's how the firm is pitching itself to advertisers to help IPG compete with Accenture, Deloitte and other consultancies:

Black Glass sees opportunity in helping CMOs scrambling to navigate the pandemic and the evolving business landscape.

It says it can help CMOs increase growth, reduce costs, and deliver results.

Its process includes using data from IPG's data hub Acxiom and other sources and using financial modeling to develop frameworks.

It also promises to execute rapidly, and seeks to be compensated based on performance.

Black Glass says it can help with near-term goals like advertising and automation to longer-term ones like customer acquisition and loyalty.

Its main offering is optimizing marketing for efficient revenue growth and driving long-term value.

Specifically, Black Glass says it can help translate consumer data to help CMOs make key business decisions.

The pitch breaks down how Black Glass can help CMOs develop a lean marketing model that delivers on growth while cutting costs.

Its hypothesis is that marketers should identify areas of focus, as this is what increases growth while creating savings.

By focusing on certain areas, Black Glass can drive savings of up to 22% and efficiency by 1.5x, according to Klumper.

Black Glass works in 6-8 week sprints.

Black Glass summarizes its benefits as access to data and a network of experts.