GLOBAL, OCTOBER 10, 2012 – Advertising is still a testosterone-filled playground. Just ask Interpublic Group, one of the few networks that is looking to close what is more a gender chasm than a gap.
Women account for only 8% of global creative directors and 2% of the industry’s chief executive officers. The scale of this imbalance was forcefully driven home at IPG seminars in Cannes over the past two years. IPG followed up 2011’s ‘Beyond Mad Men’ with ‘Conversations on Women in the Advertising Marketing and Media Industry’
this year.
"When you look at the US and European markets, women make up about 50% of the advertising industry workforce,” said IPG chairman and CEO Michael Roth. “But re- cent studies in those markets show that in the US only 38% of the executive ranks in our industry are women, and in the UK, management is only 22% female, confirming a gender gap.
Tony Wright, chairman of IPG-owned network Lowe & Partners, is cognizant of the pressing need to right this imbalance. “A lot of people use Mad Men and things great about Mad Men; that’s an image from the 50s and is obviously outdated. In Europe and the US, it’s still a very guyish business. Obviously it is interesting in the Asian market.
Lowe Philippines president and chief creative officer Leigh Reyes is perhaps a fitting advertisement of the progress Asia has made in closing the gap. Reyes spoke animatedly as a panelist in the Conversations with Women seminar, noting that her rise to the top was not atypical in a market where gender has never been a barrier to being a leader.
With emerging markets accounting for a sizable part of Lowe’s global business, the lack of diversity is less of an issue for the net- work. He said the bigger issue was how far diversity could be pushed if there was no accompanying support, or worse, wariness, on the part of clients.
“If it goes against the culture, are we prepared to be trailblazers and leaders? That is a much more challenging question. As a company with a lot of business (in different regions), you need to be respectful but equally we represent change in some of these places. We are an appealing global employer and, if we embrace the issue, it will create change.”
Coming from the business’ planning and strategy side, Wright has seen first-hand missed opportunities in retaining good female planners.
Whether driven by motherhood or other pressing reasons, women tend to leave at the peak of their careers. “It’s very hard to find planners. We spend a lot of time trying to find good planners…and we make it quite difficult for them to come back in any meaningful role”.
He says Lowe has tackled the roadblock by being flexible and creative with the problem. “We say, ‘if you don’t want to be here, if you don’t want to work 100 hours a week… (then) work with one client for three or four days a week’.”
He said he would rather have the talent for a few days a week than to lose the person altogether. “The people with the best people win,” says Wright, adding that employers can cut talent wastage with greater creativity and flexibility in the way human resources are managed.
As Wright sees it, women generally have more peripheral vision and human under- standing, qualities which makes them strong leaders. “Obviously this is an incredible generalization. There are men who have that; there are women who don’t, but in general terms women have more empathy… they have more sensibility than the current generation of 50-year-old leaders.”
Wright’s views on women are to some extent shaped by his mother, a working class London woman who was an important influence on his life despite her passing at a very
young age.
