How Leo Burnett’s female management numbers have jumped by 300% since last week
Dr Mumbo would like to offer his hearty congratulations to Leo Burnett staffers Sarah Palmer and Emma Montgomery for their well deserved promotion to the agency’s Sydney management team.
Both have been added to the team picture within the last 48 hours or so, tripling the number of women featured from one to three.
Palmer, head of talent management, has been with Leos for 11 years. Montgomery, who leads the planning team, for nearly two years.
Yay for tokenism!
Wow, how panicked is management to cobble together this pathetic effort!
Tokenism and knee jerk leadership at its finest. Do they think clients are dumb enough to fall for this?!
Leo B tries to cover up what is plain for all to see.
Still a pathetic effort to show how there are no senior creative women.
They do exist (senior women creatives do, surely you can look a little harder) btw and they are quality as well, just beaten down by the boys club that is a part of Australia.
Why would you fear change it is inevitable.
‘You’ve been endorsed for Photoshop and Gender Equality skills on LinkedIn’
I’m so proud of you Leo’s! I was sad for Leo’s that their picture was the target but at the same time I was extremely happy, this needed to change, and great agencies take it on the chin and make the changes needed. Good on you!
this is turning into a vicious cycle. Now we’re attacking them for promoting females in response to the furor? Can someone make it clear what Leo’s is supposed to do? Should they fire half the CDs they hired and replace them?
This is an industry issue. Stop kicking the dog, it won’t help.
You’re (deliberately?) missing the point, “Witch Hunt”.
These women haven’t been promoted. Their job titles are the same.
They’ve just been cyncially added to the Leo’s management page to make it look like they’ve done something.
An increase from 1 to 3 is a 200% increase.
So the boys club at Mumrella keep up the attack on LB. As head of a rival agency I find the continuation of the 7 white guys in appalling bad taste considering what’s just happened in Paris. Get off your lazy fucking male butts and go find out how French agency staff are handling the crisis in Paris. Go find some real stories that are insightful and enlightening. When you have equality in your own editorial ranks then critise all you like…but you are now coming across as high school bullies. Fuckwits.
Hi CCO (Are you really head of a rival agency? I see somebody’s been commenting from your IP address in a number of different identities, but all very supportive of the Leos management.)
And I think you may have been reading too many “surveys” on Campaign Brief. You can see our updated staff list here: https://mumbrella.com.au/about.
If you walked into our office, I don’t think you’d feel you were in a “boys club”. As it happens, we do employ about twice as many women as men. Our latest senior editorial recruit (yet to be announced) also happens to be a woman, hired because she was the best person for the job. And of our various departments, all but one (yes, editorial) happen to be headed by women.
Regarding your editorial advice, invoking Paris as a reason to argue against coverage of an important issue seems pretty tacky to me.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Senior creative women in Sydney, we suspect you’re going to have a lot of approaches over the next few weeks. When negotiating request the highest number you can say without laughing out loud says Cindy Gallop
I don’t see how this article helps things. It reeks of nasty.
There for the grace of God go every other creative department. Leo Burnett is copping the flak for the entire industry and now Mumbrella has resorted to bullying.
You’re no better than Campaign Brief.
Tim, there aren’t many CCO’s in Australia. Care to confirm that it was a Australian based?
Leo’s is just one perpetrator of an issue that is rife in the industry. Tim, the example you have used for Leo’s management team could be applied to so many agencies. Most of them will roll out the number of female employees they have as some kind of defence. Most of these employees will make up their client service teams who are over 70% women.
It is just as hard for any male to enter gain a role in client service as it is for a women in creative.
Yet in spite of these high numbers of women in client service very few of them make it onto management boards as they are kept in administrative/project management roles or choose to leave because of the demands of having a family.
The total picture of the industry, its hiring practices and discriminatory preferences of all kinds is not a pretty picture at all.
Funny, can’t see any fingers in these shots. Are Leo’s hiring peole without fingers as part of their new diversity push? I’m sure there’s a few female creatives out their who would gladly give Leos the fingers.
This is definitely a national issue and Leo’s just the example being used but “promoting” 2 women to the management team since the furore blew up is just manipulative. Why not admit the problem and lead the way for the industry in trying to solve it rather than try and protect their brand. Its no different to what all the big corporates try to do in a crisis. Why not practice transparency and openness instead of game playing and defensiveness?
they have all been squished together on the same line now. Nice work.
@Chucky and A womans POV.
A man in Australia is 97% times more likely to become a CD than a woman.
Yet there is NO rational, logical, scientific or statistical evidence that women are in fact less creative than men.
THISis why women are upset.
Todd still wearing his “WTF” t-shirt.
He really knows how to dress for every occasion. And photo-shuffle.