It won’t be long before New York City salaries are as clear as that one car from SpongeBob.

Starting May 15, nearly all New York City job listings must include a salary range, per a December City Council decision, although it’s unclear if it applies to remote positions. It’s the latest move in the US to increase pay transparency, following similar decisions in states like California, Maryland, and Colorado.

Step back: Right now, New Yorkers wanting to get a sense of what others make mostly depends on their willingness to share.

• Salaries in the marketing, advertising, and media industries are famously murky, spurring documents like the Real Agency Salary spreadsheet and Content Marketing Salary Report to crop up, allowing people to anonymously compare and submit their salaries. Crowdsourcing also happens on sites like Reddit and Glassdoor, and, if you’re lucky, among coworkers.

Looking ahead: But much of that could soon change thanks to the new law, and experts say it could have implications on the marketing industry outside NYC, too.

Leveling the playing field

Celeste Bell, EVP and head of HR at Deutsch NY, called it “the first step to real equality.” Glassdoor’s career trends expert Allison Sullivan agreed, telling Marketing Brew that “salary transparency is an important tool in closing pay gaps and ensuring equal pay for equal work.”

And the data backs it up: One forthcoming study in the journal Nature Human Behaviour looked at 100,000 academics in the US over 14 years throughout eight states and found the gender pay gap fell by up to 45% in organizations with pay transparency. Without action, The New York Times writes that it will take until 2059 to close the wage gap for white women, and until at least 2121 for Black and Hispanic women.

Given that we’re in a period of employee empowerment, Simon Fenwick, EVP of talent, equity, and inclusion at the 4A’s, told us that now is a great time for agencies to tighten up their retention and recruitment plans. “I think there’s a real opportunity with the transparency law for agencies to really coalesce around consistency and pay,” he said.

• This is especially true as employees become aware of what they’re making in comparison to others. “I think that specifically for women, for people of color, for folks that, historically, have been making less, it’s gonna be eye-opening for them,” Bell said. “I imagine that employees will be looking at their own job boards, comparing against where they are, and they’ll be looking at competitor job boards.”

Tech startup Elpha previously took matters into its own hands, developing a salary database to help women identify pay disparities. Lani Assaf, Elpha’s marketing lead, agreed that the timing of this decision is noteworthy. “There’s a real synergy there between the fact that employers are desperate for talent, and at the same time, we’re moving towards this more transparent pay approach,” she said.

Some fear the law could remove job opps in New York City, but others think that’s unlikely. Read the full story here.—KH

An ad exec is calling BS on corporate America.

Ty Montague, co-founder, chairman, and chief purpose officer of the creative and strategic agency co:collective, has created a podcast with iHeartMedia that aims to do exactly that.

• Calling Bullsh!t debuted on February 9, with the first episode homing in on one of the biggest, baddest companies of the moment: Meta. Montague said that the January 6 attack on the US Capitol—then becoming aware of the “role” Facebook may have played in the event—served as a catalyst for the podcast’s creation.
• “Facebook is a company that says that its purpose is to empower all of us to build community and bring the world closer together, and that was obviously the opposite of what was happening,” Montague told Marketing Brew. “That made me wonder how many other companies are saying that they’re trying to make the world a better place, all while they’re doing something completely different.”

Break it down: The premise of the pod, which Montague is creating with his agency, is twofold. The first half of each episode explores “the facts of the case,” Montague explained, including the history of the company in question, the issue that caught his team’s attention, and interviews with experts like authors, reporters, and activists.

In order to determine which companies are worthy of the spotlight, Montague starts by discussing companies that have recently made headlines with his team. Then, once a decision has been made, the pod’s lead researcher and guest curator, Basil Soper, and researcher Mijon Zulu, take the reins for a final deep dive before Montague and the team line up interviews with experts.

Halfway through each episode, Montague declares whether or not he thinks the company under the microscope is full of it. “There are companies where there is a gap between word and deed and that gap appears to be intentional,” he said. “They appear to be trying to mislead people.”

Read more about the podcast here, including some of the companies that will be discussed on it.—AM

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Work management platform Monday.com is going to the Super Bowl for the first time via a regional campaign, targeting its top US markets on TV and IRL in lieu of a one-time, national ad buy.

The campaign was created in collaboration with marketing agency Mustache, another Super Bowl first-timer. According to information shared with Marketing Brew, the TV spot, which envisions the idea of “[working] without limits” by literally showing people defying gravity, cost the team $3.5 million for inventory. An additional “few million” went toward other aspects of the campaign, like OOH and social ads across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Keep an eye out: Those watching the Super Bowl in cities like Atlanta, Columbus, and Portland will see the ad live on TV. Residents of other cities like New York, Miami, and Salt Lake City will also see the campaign during the game, as well as in-person via OOH placements like bus and subway ads.

Guy Shriki, head of brand awareness and offline marketing at Monday.com, told Marketing Brew that segmenting the targeting in this way allowed them to save money and reach the “right regions” for the company.

The goal of the ad, he said, is not just to encourage people to use Monday.com, but also help with recruiting efforts as the company expands. The team will look at metrics like brand awareness and number of job applications in advertised regions to measure the success of the campaign.

Looking ahead: While it’s too early to tell, Shriki said this could be just the beginning for Monday.com in the Super Bowl, and a national buy could be next. “I think looking to the future, this is definitely something that we will consider,” he said. “This is part of our goal, to grow every year and to reach more and more audiences.”—KH

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Inspo: Here’s what’s trending on TikTok this week.

Rack ’em up: Check out these tips for how to get more people following your brand on IG.

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The Interactive Advertising Bureau released its fifth annual State of Data report this week. It surveyed ad execs across the industry about topics like privacy changes, the death of third-party cookies, addressability, data collection, and measurement.

Alarm bells: The survey indicates that less than half (46%) of industry leaders understand Google’s Privacy Sandbox. Maybe they haven’t read our guide to the third-party cookie…

Plus, 66% said they’re not adjusting their measurement strategies this year, and 59% said they’re not increasing investments in first-party data.

Angelina Eng, vice president of measurement and attribution for the IAB, said greater transparency across the industry—from ad-tech companies to agencies to brand execs—could help solve the lack of knowledge and action surrounding measurement and privacy changes.

“I think ad-tech platforms have a role in helping educate clients about these impending changes, and actually explaining how it applies to their business and then translates back to the requirements of their clients,” Eng told Marketing Brew.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

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• Prime Video headed to the forge for its Lord of the Rings series first look
• Thursday Night Football has a new logo