Is the Australian ad industry more woke than their UK or US peers?
Matt Lawton, managing director of Five by Five Australia, takes a look at how Aussie adland measures up against its UK and US counterparts, in addressing the big issues including gender equality, mental health and the environment.
It’s no secret that many marketing services agencies are struggling to defend their propositions and profit margins against a range of threats.
Beyond the commercial challenges, the industry is also in the cross hairs of environmental and social advocacy pressure groups. We’re a good target because of the influence we can have on culture through our media literacy and ability to impact behaviour change.
And to our industry’s credit, we often see unprompted efforts to lead initiatives.
Creative people might indeed be best placed to help solve issues linked to climate change, homelessness and ageism but it can feel a bit of an overwhelming expectation when the day job isn’t exactly a walk in the park.
I was curious to understand if the saturation of issues tackled by the Australian ad industry is seen in other markets. Who else is doing their bit? The UK and US are home to thousands more agencies and so I expected to find many more examples of collective effort than in Australia.
In fact, it was the opposite.
Before I continue, I have to hold my hands up to the clickbait headline. I despise the word ‘woke’ as it diminishes the merit of a grateful and compassionate mindset. It’s often used to dismiss those of us who are aware of issues that are bigger than our self by those who can’t see beyond self.
I’ve largely found, people who work in our industry are well grounded and generous-hearted. In the US, UK and Australia there are many examples of agency founders who’ve made great strides on issues important to them.
These individual agency efforts include Analogfolk (UK) using AI to depict some of adland’s high-profile male creative leaders as women in a new campaign aimed at tackling the lack of representation and visibility of female creative leaders.
In the US we’ve seen Stoltz run a program called Returnship where they hire people that have been out of the workforce for a while (eg women taking leave to raise children).
And here in Australia, UM staff support victims of domestic abuse with an annual impact day. Brilliant.
But that’s all different to a concerted community effort to address an issue.
What my initial research efforts have revealed is that neither the US or UK can boast the same number of industry led, collective, volunteer initiatives designed to address today’s important societal issues as the Australian advertising sector. Surely, this can’t be the case?
I’ve found 16 Australian initiatives vs 7 in the US and 5 in the UK. Although some initiatives (eg Ad Net Zero) are global.
Please add to each list in the comments to ensure each country’s efforts are properly represented.
UK
Gender equality
- Women in Advertising & Communications Leadership (WACL) Women’s’ Health Hero
- Snowflake Women in Data
Environment / Climate change
Ageism
US
First Nations / Racial equality
Environment / Climate change
- Clean Creatives
- Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM)
- Ad Net Zero
Gender equality
- Own It, an initiative to increase the number of women owned ad agencies
Ageism
Australia
Domestic violence / Homelessness / Youth
- The Laptop Initiative – included based on TrinityP3 advocacy efforts to engage around 40 agencies in the cause (including Five by Five)
- UnLtd helping children and young people at risk
Environment / Climate change
Mental health
- 36 months
- Support Act’s “Mental Health and Wellbeing in Music and the Creative Industries 2024 survey” partnering with the Centre for Social Impact Swinburne and Entertainment Assist
- Love our Work industry charter
- Never Not Creative
Gender equality
- Women in Media
- Advertising Council Gender Pay Gap reporting
- Snowflake Women in Data
- F*ck the cupcakes
- The Aunties
First Nations / Racial equality
Obesity
Ageism
- The Experience Advocacy Taskforce (EAT), in partnership with Advertising Industry Careers (AIC)
- Youngbloods Australia
Matt Lawton is the managing director of Five by Five Australia.
This article originally appeared in a LinkedIn article and has been reproduced here with permission.
UK, Gender Equality:
Creative Equals
https://www.creativeequals.org/
Bloom
https://www.creativeequals.org/
Women in Marketing
https://womeninmarketing.org.uk/
Ageism:
Visible
https://www.visible-inc.com/
Mental Health:
NABS
https://nabs.org.uk/
US, Gender Equality:
3PercentMovement
https://www.3percentmovement.com/
SheRunsIt
https://sherunsit.org/
MKTG WMN
https://www.mktgwmn.com/
Racial Equality:
Asians In Advertising
https://www.asiansinadvertising.com/
Asian American Advertising Federation
https://www.3af.org/
AdColor
https://adcolor.org/
Gold House
https://goldhouse.org/
Blackweek
https://www.blackweek.co/
Hispanic Marketing Council
https://hispanicmarketingcouncil.org/
MAIP
https://foundation.aaaa.org/maip.html
Ageism:
GirlsGone50
https://www.girlsgone50.com/
Many causes:
The Ad Council
https://www.adcouncil.org/
I’ve listed only the ones that sprang to mind immediately. I can promise you that in both the UK and the US there are many, many more.
Australian media publishers are the worst when in it comes to hiring and promoting people of colour, women and especially women over 45! Check out the latest headlines of the failing TV, Radio and Digital companies – all led by old white men! When they do bow out or should I say – are finally forced out, they are arrogant enough to think they are going to make great mentors.
We have long way to go in this country – men will still support men!
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“Creative people might indeed be best placed to help solve issues linked to climate change” – Yeah Naaa, have they been to the slums of Mumbai lately?
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Now show the metrics of the goals defined and the material change that’s been achieved among the hand wringing on the Wikipedia of “social” issues mentioned here .
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