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.
mamamia anyone ?
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?
Great article Alex – the industry needs more discussions like this.
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.
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.)
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.
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?
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.
Well said from a young woman of colour! What a refreshing article.
Is anyone going to say the quality of work coming out of the Aussie ad industry is fantastic? Could this be a contributing factor?
What about the female domination in the Accounts Sector, when do the tables turn?
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.
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!
@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.
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.
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?
This is the kind of stuff you get:
http://madtown.com.au/html/s02....._top_id=56
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
the change will only come when clients demand gender equality from
Agencies for sound business reasons
“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.