Award-Winning Creatives Launch First Talent Management Agency Representing Black Creatives

From left: Ant Tull; Sebastian Walker; Tiffany Golden; Jason Pierce 

INK-MGMT, a new talent management agency dedicated to Black creative talent in ad land, has announced its launch today. Built as a direct answer to performative antics that often backfire, especially post-George Floyd, INK-MGMT’s biggest goal is to represent the 'new mass market' by connecting them to the world’s top brands and agencies.

Based out of Denver and New York, INK brings together a trio of award-winning heavyweights as its founders: Photographer, chef and creative director Jason Pierce; Droga5 and VML alum Ant Tull, and multidisciplinary artist Sebastian Walker. Amongst this trio, they’ve brought 40+ years of brand-building skills and unique perspectives to elevate brands including Acura, American Airlines, Hotels.com, Domino’s, Hennessy, Instacart, and Wendy’s.

Together, along with award-winning producer and Wieden + Kennedy alum Tiffany Golden as their first director of business development, this team says it’s focused on innovative staffing of diverse creatives from both traditional and non-traditional backgrounds to help improve company cultures and ensure Black creatives can all flourish.

INK co-founder Jason Pierce said in a statement, “The topic of finding Black Talent is too often treated as a pain point by the ad industry. Not only are we representative of the culture, but we are also representative of the talent.”

Representation for the ad industry has been a long-time issue, made more clear in the last three years. In a recent survey done by the 4As, Black or African American talent still makes up just 6% of the industry. Deepening the disparity is where talent stacks up at different levels: while 68% of talent is in administrative or entry levels, only 3% of Black employees in agencies have made it to the executive ranks.

“Leaders have good intentions,” Jason adds, “but are falling short of being intentional. Supporting a Black-founded company that is also using great care in recruiting outstanding Black talent and in return will be giving back to Black creators is the flex.”

Photo credit: Mimi McCormick