Jason Pierce, Ant Tull and Sebastian Walker have teamed to launch INK—MGMT, billed as being the full-service talent management agency representing Black creative talent in adland. The three founders are Black creatives whose lauded work spans brands including Acura, American Airlines, Hotels.com, Domino’s, Hennessy, Instacart and Wendy’s. INK—MGMT brings a highly specialized and much-needed set of services: focusing on the innovative staffing of Black creatives from traditional and nontraditional backgrounds, helping to improve company cultures, and ensuring Black creatives can flourish.
Detroit native Pierce is a photographer, chef, and highly awarded creative director with over two decades of brand-building experience working with top agencies and brands. Tull is a writer with an art background whose penchant for authentic tones and culturally-relevant ideas has contributed to work for a variety of industry mainstays such as Droga5 and VML. And Walker is a multidisciplinary artist from Florida whose eye for what’s next in design, fashion, and photography has helped agencies throughout the country including CP+B, MullenLowe U.S. and most recently Grey NY.
Tull and Walker serve as co-heads of creative at INK—MGMT while Pierce is CEO.
Rounding out INK—MGMT’s leadership team is Tiffany Golden, a Wieden+Kennedy alum and award-winning producer with over a decade of experience in film production, episodic television, pageants, commercials, events, and activations. Working on iconic brands during her tenure at W+K such as Samsung, Nike, and Coca-Cola, Golden has been tapped as INK—MGMT’s first director of business development.
“The topic of finding Black talent is too often treated as a pain point by the ad industry,” said Pierce. “Not only are we representative of the culture but we are representative of the talent. Leaders have good intentions but are falling short of being ‘intentional.’ Supporting a Black-founded company that is using great care in recruiting outstanding Black talent and in return will be giving back to Black creators is the flex.”
Black or African American talent makes up less than six percent of the advertising industry, according to a 4A’s survey of more than 40,000 employees across 165 agencies. Black talent is severely underrepresented at the executive level, with 68% percent having an admin or entry-level role. When it comes to the creative department, just three percent is Black.
