Boys’ club: The ad industry’s secret shame
Advertising has always been a white boy’s club, but now is the time to change that argues Alex Hayes.
Cindy Gallop’s tirade yesterday about Leo Burnett Sydney’s creative hires being five white men has caused a lot of commentary. What worries me is the amount which are to the effect of ‘there’s nothing to see here’.
Last year I did some management training which involved personality testing, and the results were very interesting. It showed that in each department of the company we had effectively hired the same personality types.
The lesson: you tend to hire people like you.
While publishing and the ad industry are two completely different sectors, there’s still something in that insight.
Full disclosure before we go any further, I’m a white, middle class male in his 30s.
Are Leos being unfairly singled out here? Yep. In truth it could have been one of three dozen agencies, large and small, who send out these type of releases (check out this Tumblr for many more examples globally, or this one). Who doesn’t want to boast about their amazing new hires, and judging from track records each of these guys got there on merit.
Ultimately of course it isn’t about Leos (who according to many anonymous comments have lots of women working at the agency, but won’t engage on the issue publicly). Gallop would admit Leos were a convenient scapegoat. She was just trolling them as a catalyst to get the topic on the radar. As she says herself she “likes to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business”.
Guess what, it worked, and here we are.
But judging from these stats that the Communications Council has shared with me from their last annual salary survey, which takes in around 2,500 employees, I’m inclined to say as an industry as a whole, there is a problem. Just spend a couple of minutes looking at them, and think about the real world implications.
The reason I say it’s a hidden shame is highlighted by a lot of contributors on the Gallop comment thread: “There’s lots of women at my agency, I spent this morning taking briefs from them.”
Another said: “At my agency there are around 25 creatives, and only five of them women. Women are poorly represented. But does anyone actually know if as many women WANT to be creatives as men? Are 50% of applicants for creative roles women? I’m going to say no.”
I’m sure the 42% of the Award School students this year who were female would fancy themselves as CDs someday.
The chances are at least half the people at your agency are female. After all they’re over-indexed in client services (69%) and Operations (76%). By the looks of things they’re keeping the ship running for those hopeless creative chaps who can’t tie their shoelaces. By the looks of it they’re enjoying the long lunches still.
What they’re not doing a lot of is actually running the ship. If the industry is damned near 50/50 in terms of gender split overall, then why are just 21% of senior management roles held by women? If we’re saying everyone gets to where they are on merit (as a lot of anonymous commenters have been) then women must mostly be hopeless leaders – right?
At the top of the tree it’s a boy’s club. There’s no way to deny that. A quick flick through my contacts book shows me it’s mainly men under the job description ‘CEO’ or ‘managing director’ – with a couple of exceptions like Melinda Geertz and Lindsey Evans – that’s one of the reasons we’ve asked her to chair our Future Leaders event in a couple of weeks time. Encouragingly nearly half of those enrolled so far are female.
Hell, you just have to look at most agency names to see they were founded by men.
That imbalance means we also struggle at times to make sure women are properly represented on panels at our events. Often it’s not for wont of trying, and we’re conscious of the new Peggy’s List which has been set up as a good tool to help us bring out new and interesting voices.
Talking to the Comms Council CEO Tony Hale yesterday he readily admitted there is a problem in some parts of the industry that needs addressing. And the Comms Council is trying to facilitate change, with initiatives like the Male Champions of Change and a Gender Diversity hub. Get on there and have a sniff around, there’s some interesting stuff.
Worryingly, what we don’t have any tangible evidence for is the ethnic diversity of the industry. But you just have to look at the team photos on websites or pop into an office to know there’s not a lot of people who don’t speak English as a first language at home, or have grown up west of Leichardt. I’ll wager they don’t come close to reflecting the actual population as a whole.
Again the Comms Council says it’s working with the charity I-Manifest to give people from different backgrounds a chance to experience agency life, and see there’s a potential for them to have a career in the ad industry.
And why don’t we extrapolate it further and look at the ages of people in your agency as well. I don’t think there’s any data on that, but I’m willing to bet there’s quite a large disconnect there with people over 50 hard to come by. Grey hair doesn’t say ‘innovative and creative’ in the way most agencies seem to want to. What it does say is ‘experienced’ and probably ‘expensive’, two underrated qualities.
Even Hale admitted to me he got a little fed up of being the oldest person in the room at his agency by 10 years or more, which is why he took a job with the Newspaper Works, and now the Comms Council. But there’s clearly a part of him that wants to be connected to the industry.
None of this is not a new or unknown problem, just one you as an industry have been ignoring for too long, and just won’t engage with.
How do I know that? Last year we did our own research into this area and came up with some very similar results to this – you can revisit those articles below.
- Industry of Mad Men? New figures show women represent a quarter of creatives, 70% of suits
- The Mad Men industry: Where are all the women?
- The Mad Men Industry – attracting and retaining women
- The Mad Men Industry – Is Australia worse than other markets for gender equality?
- ‘Male industry champions’ recruited to tackle creative gender diversity issue
- Five unspoken truths getting in the way of gender equality
Leaving aside the brilliant op-ed from Nitsa Lotus there were a total of 19 comments on these articles. So far the Cindy Gallop article has had 60+ in just over 12 hours, and that’s still rising – fast.
Similarly, whenever we put on diversity sessions at events like Mumbrella360 it’s crickets – people would rather sit through a dry session on data analytics than engage in the debate.
I don’t think quotas are the answer. I also don’t think things can go on as they are. There’s a self perpetuating patriarchy in the industry which doesn’t consciously know that it is.
I do believe in people being promoted on merit. I just happen to think there may be a lot of people out there in positions to hire who need to reassess what their definitions of merit are.
If you’re struggling, like many agencies are, then chances are hiring yet more people who look, work and think like you isn’t going to help you much. It’s not like the industry is churning out such vast quantities of amazing work that it couldn’t do with some fresh perspectives. Think of how many people are paying money to actively avoid your ads.
If you’re interested in ideas on how to change this thinking then Gallop’s keynote address to the 3% (that’s the number of women who are creative directors in the US) conference last week, gives some interesting perspectives. Feel free to leave other resources in the comment thread and I’ll add them in at the bottom of the article.
There’s a long road ahead, but the bottom line is this. Women and people from ethnic backgrounds don’t need the ad industry. Let’s face it, there’s many better paying and less stressful career routes out there.
The ad industry needs more of them.
- Alex Hayes is editor of Mumbrella
mamamia anyone ?
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How does spending “x” months/years out of the workforce to have children affect a woman’s chances of landing senior/management roles?
Is there any data/research on this?
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Great article Alex – the industry needs more discussions like this.
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As a talent acquisition specialist, surely the question that needs to be asked is how many women applied, and how many reached the shortlist.
Recruitment is a selection process, emphasis on process, with winners and losers, if this was a search process…..then your points are valid, if it was an advertised search process, then it depends on what is in the market…..and who threw there collective hats into the ring……….and if there is not the talent in the pond, you are going to recruit the same old same old….
as there are only so many fish in the said pond as proven by your stats…..more women in Ops and Customer facing roles.
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What are agencies’ maternity leave policies?
Do any mainstream ad agencies offer paid leave (the way many large corporations in other fields do_, or do most simply hold a job open for 12 months?
As a female starting to think about these things, and in the job hunt right now, it’d be good to know. (And unfortunately it’s impossible to ask outright.)
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Full disclosure: I’m a black Jamaican Australian and yes, perhaps the acceptance of cultural norms in our industry prevent me from batting an eyelid at admittedly vanilla hires (too much?). But now that you mention it… questions should not only be asked but answered and acted upon. It’s the Australian way… I think.
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Some excellent points Alex.
I was talking to an agency CEO at an industry event two days ago who admitted there was a preference to hire male creatives as it is pretty much a boys club. The view was that it is difficult for women to fit in and function within the male dominated creative culture and if they were they were included they were usually working on the softer projects.
Women on the other hand he believed were well suited to account service as they were detail oriented and as most of their role is simple project management and administration based, he was less likely to hire guys for account service roles as it is dominated by women and as a result guys are often not attracted to client service. He also mentioned that women tend to move on when they have children which gives him the opportunity to hire new young talent. He mentioned “they are not really interested in building a career anyway! The event I was attending was an event looking at the “Evolution of the Suit”. Over 70% of attendees were women of the very age group he had highlighted.
As a guy who has spent around 30 years in the industry both of his standpoints disgusted me. I took him to task on all this and his response was “that’s the way it is and it works so why would I change it”
Now I could name and shame him and undoubtedly he’d deny all and sue me at the time. The reality is that this point of view is common and he is far from alone in taking this stance.
The industry is increasingly obsessed with its client facing cutting edge youthful presence ensuring that careers in either creative or client service are increasingly short lived.
Overlay this on the hiring preferences of both creative and client service and we have an industry that claims to be nimble and on the leading edge of change but in reality has failed to adapt and embrace diversity in all its forms and build on the experience that everyone works so hard to gain.
The industry has proven itself to be very capable of discriminating against gender, culture, age and experience and denies there is a problem. Any other industry that did the same would be publicly shamed by there appears to be a huge degree of pride in taking these stance as its simply good for business. But is it really?
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Unfortunately, this is not restricted to gender, it is a general reflection of the stiffness and fear at the top in Australian business. Many at the top of agencies and corporates are too scared to allow new blood and new ideas in, as it will demonstrate how far behind the times and disconnected they are.
Getting rid of these clueless, inflexible, old fashioned types is the only way that we can start to see greater equality for all and globally comparable development in Australian agencies.
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Well said from a young woman of colour! What a refreshing article.
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Is anyone going to say the quality of work coming out of the Aussie ad industry is fantastic? Could this be a contributing factor?
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What about the female domination in the Accounts Sector, when do the tables turn?
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Advertising’s (not at all secret) shame is its perpetuation of social paranoia and debasement of human aesthetic experience in the naked pursuit of corporate profits. Complaining about the underrepresentation of women in the advertising industry is akin to bemoaning the lack of female illegal rubbish dumpers. Who cares who’s poisoning the river? Stop the poison.
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On a side note “Last year I did some management training which involved personality testing”…..looks like recruitment practices aren’t the only thing stuck in the 70’s!
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@James White
Hahahahaha yeah yeah alright comrade.
So no one cares that there are more female suits, but it’s shameful there are more male creatives? Is it shameful there aren’t many female bricklayers? Is it shameful there aren’t more male primary school teachers?
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be more female creatives — there should. But the outrage is ridiculous considering there are much larger discrepancies in other industries.
You wanna be a creative? Go to AWARD School, make a folio, accept a 40K starting wage and stop whingeing. That goes for both guys and girls.
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The fairness and gender equality issue aside for just a moment, I’ve always argued that the reason much of the advertising looks the same is because it’s being created by the same types of people.
The easiest way to get some new thinking is to get some variety in the advertising gene pool.
Time for some diversity, not just because it may be the ‘right’ thing to do, but because it the effective thing to do.
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The real unfairness is that there is really never a rigorous process where the selection net is cast as wide as possible,
Mates hire mates. Period.
Once we hear that so-and-so has moved to a new place, everyone can predict who’s gonna follow suit.
Why bother even pretending that this is all about gender or racial diversity?
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This is the kind of stuff you get:
http://madtown.com.au/html/s02....._top_id=56
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Love your piece Alex thank you. I would love to know how the new ceo at woolies feels about his agency having 1 female creative in a sept of 30 Can u pls do a client survy or interviews and ask them if they care that 11% of creative depts and 3% of creative directors are women when 80 % of purchase decisions are made by women
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the change will only come when clients demand gender equality from
Agencies for sound business reasons
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“And why don’t we extrapolate it further and look at the ages of people in your agency as well. I don’t think there’s any data on that, but I’m willing to bet there’s quite a large disconnect there with people over 50 hard to come by”
Over 50 you’re fucked.
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