A week on from International Women’s Day (IWD) and all those great initiatives, lunches, talks and discussions that were being had around gender parity on 8 March have already dwindled. TBWA launched a video series titled ‘Take the Lead’, DDB rolled out a campaign called ‘Talent Has No Gender’ – all bloody good signs but the momentum needs to remain beyond the tent pole day to focus attention.
You can get the current print issue on iPad now, and as of next week it will be available on Android devices and on desktop via Zinio.
This edition of AdNews is The Gender Issue. The debate around women in creative teams has flared up in the last six months, in response to Leo Burnett’s ‘five white male’ hires; more broadly sexism in the ad industry has come under scrutiny as a result of the fallout from M&C Saatchi’s 21st birthday celebrations. And so The Gender Issue refers not just to this particular issue of AdNews, but to the broader debate that has been raging not just for the last six months, or even six years – but 60 years.
You’ll find a feature on marketing to women, a roundtable discussion about gender in the industry (page 13), the results of a SheSays survey on attitudes (page 15) and opinion columns from senior women on the state of affairs both here and overseas (page 26). Creative Choice (page 20) looks at various ads launched for IWD and in Creative Focus we ask about diversity more broadly (page 18).
Thankfully, in Australia we don’t have the truly disgraceful situation where an agency’s worldwide chairman and CEO is being sued by an employee for allegedly making continual sexist and racist comments including “joking” about raping her, referring to “fucking Jews” and “black monkeys”. Some of it’s said to be on tape, according to Adweek’s reports. That is the reality JWT is facing in the US where also shockingly, parent company WPP is for now standing by Gustavo Martinez in the suit. [Just hours after this was printed - it emerged that Martinez has resigned "by mutual agreement ... in the best interest of the J. Walter Thompson Company".]
So we may not have that, but that’s not to say it’s all rosy here. Some of the comments left in the SheSays survey about attitudes in agencies would leave you appalled and saddened.
The roundtable I hosted a few weeks ago was to bring together some key players and see what was really happening, what we could do next and what role AdNews should play in it all. What was great was the passion from those at the table to do something. And it was the first step towards an initiative due to launch to the market in the coming weeks that seeks to address it. Watch this space.
We’re also launching the 2016 AdNews Media Summit today. We’ve got some top industry speakers lined up for the one-day event in May and a few more up our sleeve. Last year tickets sold out so get your tickets fast.