Wendy Clark (center), who in January became CEO of DDB Worldwide, North America, says there are practical reasons for ad agencies to have more women in creative roles. Photo: DDB San Francisco
By Alexandra Bruell – 27 September 2016
When the advertising world was rocked this year by allegations of sexism and racism in its upper ranks, the industry was united in its condemnation of discrimination. The fallout was swift, considering the glacial pace of change in addressing these issues in many other industries.
Several high-ranking executives at top firms resigned after being accused of discriminatory behavior or of making sexist comments. And a number of firms—Omnicom’s Goodby Silverstein & Partners and BBDO, Interpublic’s FCB and WPP WPPGY 0.95 % media agency Maxus—appointed women in newly created or existing top creative posts.
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Despite the quick progress, a harder task awaits, say many observers and people in the industry. If Madison Avenue wants to leave the “Mad Men” culture in the past, they say, it must change the composition of ad agencies’ workforces and root out discriminatory thinking at all levels of the business.
“I don’t think hiring is enough,” says Susan Credle, global chief creative officer at Interpublic Group’s FCB. “We need to create cultures where underrepresented people can find their voice. We need to continue to educate people on unconscious bias and what it feels like to be in the minority.”
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Agencies such as Omnicom’s DDB and BBDO are slotting in “unconscious bias” training—seminars meant to instruct employees on how prejudices can creep into their decision making without their knowing it. Internal recruiting targets for women and minorities are becoming more common.
A sense of exclusion
The creative area of the business—where campaigns are dreamed up—is of particular concern to agency leaders now looking at their staff breakdowns by gender. Women accounted for just 11.5% of creative directors in communications arts, according to research released in 2014 by the 3% Conference, a group championing the advancement of female creative talent in the industry.
“If we only recruit from a narrow, homogenous part of society and ad schools, that’s crazy,” says Wendy Clark, chief executive of DDB Worldwide, North America.
According to the 3% Conference’s recent “Elephant on Madison Avenue” report, which aimed to show how pervasive sexual harassment and gender bias is in the advertising industry, 58% of the nearly 600 respondents said they felt excluded from important business meetings, while 54% said they had been subjected to unwanted sexual advances in the course of their career. (Out of the 584 respondents, 17 were men.)
Many in the industry believe it is clients, whose spending powers profits on Madison Avenue, that have the power to force change. HP Inc. HPQ 2.13 % asked its agencies to come up with a plan to diversify their ranks within the next 12 months. HP requested that each agency submit a plan that lays out how the firm will significantly increase the number of women and minorities in key creative and strategic roles.
In a letter to HP’s advertising and public-relations agencies, Antonio Lucio, the company’s chief marketing officer, wrote, “Including women and people of color in key roles is not only a values issue, but a significant business imperative.” If agencies don’t comply, Mr. Lucio wrote, “anything is on the table,” including removal from HP’s roster.
General Mills GIS 0.03 % recently announced that creative agencies competing for the food giant’s business must be staffed with at least 50% women and at least 20% people of color in the creative department. The company said, “Agencies don’t need to be at that level today, but we will have meaningful conversations with our partners to ensure they understand the importance of this shared commitment.”
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DDB, known for like McDonald’s MCD 0.30 % “I’m Lovin It” and State Farm’s “Like a Good Neighbor,” hired the NeuroLeadership Institute to train its 2,000 employees in North America on unconscious bias by the end of the year, according to Ms. Clark, who left Coca-Cola KO 1.28 % to become CEO of DDB Worldwide, North America, in January.
In an August session that lasted all afternoon, attendees heard a popular example—the tale of a symphony that tried to rectify gender bias in its audition process by blindfolding jury members. There was a glitch—some women wore high heels—so the orchestra asked auditioners to remove their shoes. Various DDB departments were asked to share scenarios in which biases might have affected their own decisions, and then the group debated them.
DDB also hired gender-equity certification firm Edge to audit and analyze gender equality across the business, including pay, promotions and hiring practices.
A different perspective
Ms. Clark says there are practical business reasons to staff more women on creative work, especially for brands whose primary consumers are women. “It’s the age-old ‘blue water on a maxi pad thing,’ ” she says, referring to old TV commercials using that image. Such ads are jarring to women, who see them and think, “That doesn’t actually represent my period at all,” she says.
Teams that include women, she says, can potentially get to “more enlightenment and more empathy” for feminine brands.
DDB’s sister agency BBDO set a goal to roughly double its senior female creative talent from 16% to 30% by the end of the year, but it leaves the agency “20% short” of where it needs to be, says CEO Andrew Robertson.
The agency held a focus group to find out why there weren’t as many women in senior creative roles as men, and learned from conversations in the group that participants thought women often weren’t given the same opportunities as men. BBDO this year will implement its own “unconscious bias” training program.
Smaller agencies are coming to grips with the issue, too. Work & Co., a three-year-old digital shop of 160 people, is pushing for a 50/50 gender split. It now mandates that its recruiters find two strong female candidates for every male candidate, and has tests for software programmers that don’t ask candidates for their gender or ethnicity until they have gone through a blind test online. There’s still a way to go: The company is now 34% female.
Skeptics wonder whether some of the initiatives being undertaken, like the antibias training, are more a show of action than sincere efforts at change.
“I think that’s a fascinating seminar and the effect is going last about two days,” said Work & Co. founding partner Gene Liebel. “Companies investing in doing [only] that are not really looking at how their hiring process and recruiting approach is part of the broader problem.”
Getting to an even gender split is a tall order, especially for the big shops grappling with large, male-dominated creative departments.
“I would see the women who were doing well and think of them as my competition” because there weren’t many roles for women like her at top levels, says Jaime Robinson, co-founder and chief creative officer of creative agency upstart Joan and a former executive creative director at Wieden & Kennedy. When it came to competition for senior jobs, “it’s like, air is getting tight up here. It’s like climbing Mount Everest. I’m so embarrassed about it now, but think it’s healthy to talk about because it was the wrong way to look at it.”
ELEPHANT ON MADISON AVENUE – RESEARCH – “Nearly 600 women told in excruciating detail what it is like to be a woman in advertising.”
http://www.elephantonmadisonavenue.com/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ad-industry-tries-to-leave-mad-men-mentality-behind-1474963322
Извор: WUNRN – 28.09.2016
