On Friday, I was on a panel at the 3 percent London conference, organised by Kat Gordon. The movement to increase the number of female Creative Directors in advertising has been running since 2012, and this is the first time the conference has come to London. The logic is that without women on the teams creating ads, which arguably have a lot of impact culturally, we wind up with men creating their version of what they think women want to see (50% of consumers, let’s not forget, and significantly higher in many key categories, like retail) – which is often very far from the truth.
It was an inspiring day, and I had the privilege of being on the same panel as Roisin Donnelly, Brand Director at P&G Northern Europe, Laura Jordan-Bambach, Creative Partner at Mr. President and Kati Russell, founder of soon-to-be-launched startup The Girlhood. Cindy Gallop gave the closing keynote, as honest and motivating as ever, no holds barred.
It’s worth reading some of the articles from the day on why the industry needs to be changed, and how. The CEO of PHD UK, Daren Rubins, had an interesting perspective on how media has changed over the last decade, from ”barrow-boy traders, aggressive, obnoxious characters” to having a lot more women leaders and having more feminine qualities in general, something all businesses would do well to emulate.
Here are a few:
Roisin Donnelly: why breakfast meetings don’t work for her
Nick Bailey, Daren Rubins, Nils Leonard and Russell Ramsey: why men need to realise the bubble of privilege they work in
Kat Gordon: learn public speaking
One Size Fits One 