Arnold Worldwide has hired Kryssy Bloch as VP, director of digital talent management. She reports to Matt Howell, managing partner/global chief digital officer, and will work with him to further enhance digital talent development across Arnold’s offices and client accounts. In addition to spearheading recruitment efforts, she will partner with internal teams to develop and institute programs to promote industry-leading knowledge and thought leadership throughout the agency’s network. She is based in Arnold’s New York office.
Bloch come over to Arnold from Ogilvy & Mather where she was associate director, interactive and technology recruiting. She cut her teeth in digital at R/GA where she spent six years, her last role there being as program manager of technology. At R/GA she oversaw resourcing, recruitment and retention issues for the agency’s large technology department, and managed the internship program, which welcomed 15 to 20 international students each year.
Bloch is the latest addition to Arnold which has been on a digital hiring spree over the last 18 months. In addition to the appointment of Howell in his current post, the agency brought on nine specialists from Modernista!’s digital department. Most recently, Arnold hired two Digitas veterans, Elliott Seaborn as exec VP, executive director at Arnold Boston, and Kim Bartkowski, digital creative director at ArnoldNYC. Arnold has additionally hired 60 digital specialists in the U.S. (bringing the total to 150 globally) across social media, mobile, user experience, digital production and interaction design from various agencies.
USC Annenberg Report: Female Protagonists Reach Parity With Men In Top-Grossing Films Of 2024
For the first time in recent history, the percentage of top-grossing films featuring female protagonists equaled the percentage of films with male protagonists, according to a pair of annual studies released Tuesday.
Movies like "Wicked,""Inside Out 2" and "The Substance" lifted Hollywood's theatrical releases to gender parity in leading roles in 2024. Of the 100 top domestic grossing films in 2024, 42% had female protagonists, and 42% had male protagonists, according to a report issued by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.
The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which also released its annual study Tuesday, found that 54% of the top 100 films at the box office in 2024 featured girls and women as protagonists. That's a massive jump from just the year prior, when 30% of films featured women in lead roles. In 2007, when the USC annual study began, that figure was just 20%.
"This is the first time we can say that gender equality has been reached in top-grossing films," Stacy L. Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, said in a statement.
"In 2024, three of the top five films had a girl or woman in a leading role, as did five of the top 10 films — including the number one film of the year, Disney's 'Inside Out 2,'" added Smith. "We have always known that female-identified leads would make money. This is not the result of an economic awakening but is due to a number of different constituencies and efforts — at advocacy groups, at studios, through DEI initiatives — to assert the need for equality on screen."
Other metrics suggested the gains in leading roles masked still-endemic disparity throughout Hollywood. The percentage of female characters in speaking roles... Read More