Australian ad agency creative departments: which has the most balanced male to female ratio?
UPDATED – As has been pointed out over the last week there is definitely a gender imbalance in the creative departments of Australia’s largest agencies.
And it seems to be only the creative department and senior management, with most other departments – account management, TV production, operations, finance – more female than male, according to The Communications Council’s most recent annual salary survey.
According to the latest agency creative department staff lists regularly updated by Portfolio & Reel, which are usually pretty spot on – but staff move daily, so any agencies disputing these numbers, please email an updated list – below are the numbers of male creatives and female creatives at the biggest agencies in Sydney and Melbourne (in alphabetical order).
The Monkeys is the most gender balanced agency in Sydney by far (18 men, 11 women), followed by Havas Australia (9 men, 5 women), WiTH Collective (8 men, 4 women), BWM Denstu (7 men, 3 women) and Ogilvy (14 men, 6 women).
SYDNEY
303Lowe (9 men, 1 woman)
AJF Partnership (4 men, 3 women)
BMF (19 men, 4 women)
BWM Denstu (7 men, 3 women)
Clemenger BBDO (19 men, 2 women)
Cummins & Partners (7 men, 2 women)
DDB (18 men, 4 women)
GPY&R (9 men, 0 women)
Havas Australia (9 men, 5 women)
Host (9 men, 2 women)
Innocean (5 men, 1 woman)
J Walter Thompson (11 men, 2 women)
Leo Burnett (38 men, 3 women)
M&C Saatchi (32 men, 6 women)
Ogilvy (14 men, 6 women)
Saatchi & Saatchi (16 men, 4 women)
The Monkeys (18 men, 11 women)
The Works (10 men, 1 woman)
Whybin\TBWA (14 men, 3 women)
WiTH Collective (8 men, 4 women)
AJF Partnership (14 men, 7 women), Leo Burnett (11 men, 7 women) and J Walter Thompson (7 men, 4 women) are the most gender balanced agencies in Melbourne.
MELBOURNE
AJF Partnership (14 men, 7 women)
BWM Dentsu (12 men, 3 women)
Clemenger BBDO (19 men, 4 women)
Cummins & Partners (11 men, 2 women)
DDB (11 men, 3 women)
GPY&R (10 men, 3 women)
J Walter Thompson (15 men, 7 women)
Leo Burnett (11 men, 7 women)
McCann (13 men, 2 women)
Ogilvy (6 men, 2 women)
Saatchi & Saatchi (6 men, 2 women)
Whybin\TBWA (16 men, 3 women)
85 Comments
An audit needed here….
I’d like to see this for other departments (e.g. Planning, Production, Account management).
Also if there is a need for every department to have an equal balance of genders.
Thanks for the breakdown. Paints a pretty dire picture.
Now let’s have a look at how many of those women creatives are in a CD/ECD role?
In my experience there are plenty of junior/mid female creatives around – but where are the ones who’ve managed to score a management level role?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okMN4A6FnA8
Now lets compare the ratios with other creative fields. Art, literature, journalism….
Is advertising the anomy or is this a widespread phenoMENa?
This again? Not sure if women are aware of this but when a Man gets a job, other Men miss out on that role too, not just women.
If you’re good at a job you get the position. Don’t point the finger tat G.E., point it at yourself.
Now lets compare the ratios with other creative fields. Art, literature, journalism….
Is advertising the anomy or is this a widespread phenoMENa?
I was a mid level female creative, and expressed multiple times my determination to move up the career ladder. 4 males / 0 females were externally hired during my employment and slotted into managerial positions. The most successful female creatives I know have started their own companies.
I love you Andy.
It’s different up here in Brisbane.
For most of my career I’ve worked in creative departments with a 50/50 split and that’s from the top down. First it was Nancy Hartley as co CD/ECD, and now with my creative partner Marianne Harvey as co CD. Clemenger BBDO Brisbane currently has a 50/50 split however last year it was 60/40 with the majority of the creative department being female. We also seem to be bucking the trend with our Managing Director being female. Gender balance is not something we aiming for but it does work really well for us.
Just as revealing is the size of creative departments now days. Long gone are the days of investing in the engine room of advertising.
@The Bot Exactly.
Why the focus on creative departments? Why not suits and planners as well? Oh, that’s right, because when it comes down to it, everyone knows suits do precious little other than handball briefs to creatives and write smiley emails to clients, and strategists/planners don’t actually do anything other than waste creatives’ time. The creatives are responsible for almost 100% of the “strategy” behind the actual work. And then the lovely, talented people in Studio make it look good.
That’s the truth, everyone knows it, but no one likes to admit it, especially not suits and planners.
We absolutely do need more female creatives. We also need more female bricklayers and firefighters and more male primary school teachers.
So to all the whingers, male and female, you want to be a creative? Go to AWARD School, make a folio, get rejected time and time again, persevere, accept a $40K starting wage, and go from there.
@#girlsboss you looked at more senior positions when you where a mid level creative? And they hired senior men instead of you? Thats your argument? You didn’t get the senior job because you were not senior enough not because you were a woman. They hired externally from your paragraph which should tell you the men in your agency were also ‘screwed’ over.
A gender audit of speakers at our industry events was released last week which may also be of interest.
As you’ll see it shows 27% of speakers, at 18 industry events during 2015, were women – http://www.mediascope.com.au/women-in-media-event-gender-audit
Peggy’s List has recently been launched to help conference organisers identify women speakers – with other solution-based initiatives and programs supporting women in our industry to be rolled out in the new year.
Women are nothing but trouble.
These figures are much worse than they were 20 years ago. Shame on the industry!
Agreed. Now, I only know the actual numbers of one of the agencies in the list, (which are actually wrong), but the few females are all junior to mid at a stretch.
Probably because Women are less likely to be happy being told what to do, which is what being a creative has become. It’s not how much of a clever thinker you are, it’s how easily you do what you are told by the suits/clients. Women argue more cleverly (ask any husband), so you’ll get more push back from a woman. Not highly desirable in today’s non-creative driven world of Advertising.
I guess Natasha Gassi was ahead of her time.
The focus on creative departments is critical to this debate. Without creatives agencies would not exist. Any agency worth its salt wants to create work that’s interesting, diverse and effective and that can’t happen when the gender balance is so far out of whack. Saying, “Plenty of jobs in other departments, ladies” is akin to saying. “Forget about being a doctor, girls, plenty of jobs for nurses and adminstrators.” Concur with Christian Staal. In Brisbane things seem a little better. Of five senior writers at BCM two of us are female, and I like to think we’re more than tokens.
Much of the commentary here is saying, quite plainly, that these numbers mean women are simply not as creatively talented as men. Will that be what you tell your daughters?
We should make an effort to hire a diverse range of women, not privately educated white vanilla locals but women from overseas.
Of the ‘men’ listed here, I would guess at least half either come from an ethnic background (European and Asian) or are from another country. This further broadens the diversity of the creative department, particularly people with differing viewpoints and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Archibald/Williams. 3 out of 8 creatives (1 female CD). Seems the smaller agencies are better at employing people for their skills, than their big boy counterparts!
Any other PC Bros here?
‘Cause I’ll throw down!
@Kate Hunter
“Saying, “Plenty of jobs in other departments, ladies” is akin to saying. “Forget about being a doctor, girls, plenty of jobs for nurses and administrators.””
Except doctors get paid more than nurses, and get more respect.
Do creatives get paid more than people in other departments? Do they get more respect?
During my time as a headhunter of creatives I found it near impossible to find women for senior roles. Major agencies wanted them, but those capable of taking the jobs were outnumbered 7 to 1. Maybe it’s the inhuman hours agencies expect, perhaps it’s the demands of motherhood, especially as the age for assuming group head and cd positions is around late twenties.There were few full time candidates and women who wanted life balance had opted to freelance.
I have never received a brief stipulating a male but often embarked on fruitless searches for the elusive female.
I think there are three things going on here:
1. Women often want to have babies. Only women can have babies. Men can’t have babies. Having babies takes you away from work for a little while. Women have to work much harder to get back to where they would have been after the return to work. And some women just want to be mums. Businesses love continuity, and having babies interrupts this. Is this a good status quo to uphold? Hell no. The healthiest workplaces are the ones that allow lives to happen around work. Because happier staff means a better quality output, staff retention and greater experience in the building. The best agencies know this. And yes yes, many women aren’t interested in having kids. But we’re talking generalities here. Not specifics.
2. Maybe men are more attracted to the role of ad creative then women. And it’s not about creative talent being tied to gender (it isn’t), but about the ratio of men vs. women who honestly feel that being a creative is absolutely what they want to do. Most industries and professions are skewed one way or the other. What’s abnormal is for genders to be equally represented.
3. The boys club factor. It’s there, but its not everything.
@Mixedteamsrule I took on the responsibilities of a senior designer, trained the manager who was above me, trained a junior designer, and project managed an entire campaign by myself including account management, invoicing etc. I was working at boarderline art director level, but my agency wouldn’t even change my job title. It wasn’t that I wasn’t skilled, and there were no other males at my level getting ‘screwed over’. It’s a boys club, you have to be into the footy and drinking beer to get anywhere.
Absolutely right Kate.
Now let’s see the figures of creatives over the age of 50. I will bet there are none. The Australian ad industry is one of the most ageist in the world. Shame on you.
@#girlboss maybe it was your attention to detail? #borderline
I have been looking for a female Senior Writer to team up with in Sydney for 12 months now, and still no luck. Perhaps they are all taken or they simply don’t exist.
I’d be interested in seeing this checked via Linked in. The truth is that there are not many Female creatives. It’s not that people don’t want to employ females. When I interview the best book wins.
Creative is a hard life, still well paid, but hard. Hours are long. Competition is nasty, manipulative and frankly machiavellian most of the time. Women are capable of working to these conditions, but choose not to. Many of the most talented women I know chose other careers when the going got…not tough, just stupid. And yes, most women’s capacity to deal with stupid is even less than mine. They’re smarter, more emotionally attuned, and found elsewhere. Don’t be so surprised.
Creative is a hard life, still well paid, but hard. Hours are long. Competition is nasty, manipulative and frankly machiavellian most of the time. Women are capable of working to these conditions, but choose not to. Many of the most talented women I know chose other careers when the going got…not tough, just stupid. And yes, most women’s capacity to deal with stupid is even less than mine. They’re smarter, more emotionally attuned, and found elsewhere. Don’t be so surprised.
@More Telling
Exactly. Why are creative departments so small? At these numbers the ratio for creative staff in agencies totals 25/30 % max.
And people bemoan we are more of a service industry than ever, no wonder.
You’d lose that bet.
One of those agencies has the around same ratio of over 50 to under 50 as it has female to male.
I believe one of the females may even be approaching that milestone, not that I’m brave enough to ask.
Creatives get paid considerably more than suits, especially if they’re past the junior level.
What this highlights to me is how small (and overworked) creative departments are. At a guess I’d say average is about 10%. That’s pitiful for a business where creativity is the product. Employ more creatives then we can employ more women.
Of course if the numbers and genders in all jobs in agencies were shown the balance might be quite different. Can’t help wondering how many females who are good creatives can’t get jobs, and why we haven’t been hearing from them.
@NOW LET’S TALK SENIORS said “…but the few females are all junior to mid at a stretch”.
Hahaha. Yes, I remember the days when agencies had senior creatives.
These days some agencies don’t have creatives at all, let alone senior ones.
The people who come up with the actual ideas that the agency sells are simply too expensive once shareholders of the multi-national parent company or ridiculous payment terms the agency has accepted are taken into account.
It’s far more profitable to simply talk jargon and deliver little. After all, the junior marketers you’re presenting to won’t know the difference and they’ll simply ask you to produce their ‘ideas’ anyway.
I think we can all agree that probably 80% of the advertising created in this country is terrible. You know it is. Really embarrassingly awful.
And according to this survey of creative departments the overwhelming number of people creating all that crap work are…blokes.
Well done fellas.
Client: This campaign is crap.
CD: I had to employ lesser people because I was shamed into employing females even though they weren’t as good.
Client: I don’t care, where’s the great campaign? I’m paying for this.
CD: This is great-ish, okayish work, but you can tell your boss it was thought up by a three person creative team comprising of a male, female and trans-gender whom is also left handed.
Client: You’re fired.
The first creative department I ever worked in in 1998 comprised the following people:
A mad Croat.
A couple of people with Aspergers.
A woman who the real life Effie.
A warlock.
People with various social and antisocial addictions.
A klepto.
A disabled person.
A rockabilly (not to be confused with the tryhard hipsters populating creative departments now).
And a guy who used to wear his girlfriends undies to work.
It was and still is the greatest creative department I’ve worked in. Talented, interesting, fucked up men and women from all different age groups making ads and having fun.
Sometime in the last 20 years our CD’s have lost their nerve and seem only to want to hire that same type of person. Its boring.
Bring back the weirdos. They give you the best work.
Think you can do better? Become a creative then! And if you’re a female, that’s even better!
If Australia was producing great ads, maybe the argument that men are better would have some credibility. But given the abysmal state of creative output in this country, perhaps it’s time to try another way? In the vast majority of cases, men write the ads and men make the decision about what goes to the client. Turn on your TV. Look at the posters in the street, ads in magazines and newspapers. Very bland. Very same same. Coles and Woolworths just came out with the same rubbish for their Christmas campaigns. Not memorable, not clever, not fun. This is the true reflection of the gender imbalance. Ad blokes talking to ad blokes and making terrible advertising. It’s embarrassing and it’s highly insulting to say they’re better than the women out there. It’s simply not true.
Untalented creatives aren’t the reason for the quantity of bad work produced in Australia. Great work gets written and not sold every single day. Would it be mischievous to suggest that the real problem is the quality of suits and quality of marketing client. Most of whom are women. See, I made a ridiculous simplification as well.
@Numbers don’t lie – unfortunately the numbers don’t stack up in your favour.
The most awarded agencies of the past year on this list have the least percentage of females.
Sydney
Leo Burnett (38 men, 3 women)
M&C Saatchi (32 men, 6 women)
Saatchi & Saatchi (12 men, 0 women)
Melbourne
Clemenger BBDO (19 men, 4 women)
While the least awarded (the ones doing the worst work) have the highest percentage of females.
Now if it was all about gender, then we’d be in a real pickle. Fortunately it has nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with talent.
Personally?
I’d love to see more chicks in the creative department, but only cool ones. Just like I’d like to see more crazy dudes. I agree with an above post, we’ve gone too vanilla.
When did this happen?
When did suits and CFOs start running the agencies? We had way more female creatives and weird people who were genuinely creative before. The kind of mad, chemically imbalanced people that were just guns at what they did and absolutely bonkers. They’ve all gone now. Well most.
I suspect, with the GFC in 2008, the suits taking over the joint shortly after and the mass exodus of financial refugees (shitloads of vanilla blokes from around the world) was when we started seeing a lot less women and less crazy people in the creative department.
Also, shortly after was when a boatload of our most talented women went overseas.
Anyway, more pussies and less dicks in the creative department please.
I feel all the men commenting here are speaking from entirely their own perspective, I’m from Auckland and went to the campaign brief lunch recently, not one single female creative, just a bunch of smug swinging blokes representing my gender, trying to convince me to buy something… for a supposedly progressive, creative industry, well, you’re just not.
As Justin Trudeau said, ‘because it’s 2015’ and yes, Australia, in general, your advertising is terrible.
Abysmal?
We punch very much above our weight for a colonial outpost. I can guarantee if there were chicks available who are better than the dudes doing this, they’d be doing it.
CDs aren’t stupid.
…They didn’t get “made redundant” when they have kids.
No excuses to be made: this is straight-up pushing women out of the industry.
Not much for a junior female creative to feel optimistic about, is it?
Tragic,
I think you’ll find Australia creates some of the most creatively awarded advertising in the world, proven time and time again at Cannes: http://www.campaignbrief.com/2015/11/australia-ranks-6-new-zealand.html
AJF Sydney look the most gender balanced with 43% women as opposed to the Monkeys with 37%.
Some of these numbers look a little exaggerated with the Monkeys clearly including designers in that number.
Woman go into account service which leads them to high paying marketing jobs. Men become creatives which leads then to being more senior creatives, working long hours for fuck all money where they wind up bitter, jaded, stressed out and poor. Why so few woman in creative? Because they’re smart.
there are plenty of talented female awarded women in this country. Plenty
@ Tragic
The company whom you dined out on is actually owned by two woman and a guy. Go to the Companies page and do a search for ‘The Sweet Shop’.
If you have a beef with The Sweet Shop, take it up with Melanie Bridge or Sharlene George.
The Sweet Shop: 09-302 3098
Better still, send them a cheque to help cover the food and drink you so willingly enjoyed. If you don’t, then all you are is just an angry talentless hypocrite.
As a background, Melanie started out as a photographer before moving into film. She was/is fucking amazing. Her rise to fame was due to her talent, not her gender.
On a similar note: Tragically, there is no Boys Club in NZ adland that confers at a secret address, drinks pig blood and plots to keep females out of the industry. I suspect there isn’t girls club either.
Personally, I enjoyed the Campaign Brief/Sweet Shop lunch. I prefer Soul bar (like all the previous afternoons), but a change of venue was nice. If you were there, we probably talked.
I was probably your boss.
“I was probably your boss”
Smug. Arrogant. Nah…..
In the wake of this discussion I am coining the phrase “Guilt Hire” right now. It’s my phrase now. You are allowed to use it (and you will), but be aware it belongs to me. Guilt Hire!
Thank you Campaign Brief for putting this out there. A great first step to addressing the issue.
Please, rather than get defensive, dismissive or jock about the whole thing, let’s use this opportunity to have a little self reflection and look at ways we can improve our industry so that our creative departments can be more accessible to people who represent a much more diverse community – not just women. It might just result in more interesting ideas.
@That guy Did you know there are plenty of very creative agencies around the world who actively shun awards, seeing them as a perpetuation of many of the industry’s cultural problems? Don’t get me wrong, excellent work gets awarded. But especially in a small industry like Australia’s, they are part of the problem. They are a way to lock people out and maintain the same insular club culture.
As for this: “I’d love to see more chicks in the creative department, but only cool ones.” Sorry to break it to you but cool people don’t want to work in advertising.
There’s no ‘boys club’ but there’s definitely a ‘girls club’ in Sydney:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/313729152120434/?pnref=lhc
I’ve cracked it! Creatives will eat their own babies for award metal – any award.
Create a ‘Most Chicks in Creative’ award. Make the trophy with a silver art deco figurine of a dude holding up a woman- like, fully supporting her, sorta thing.
Can someone please provide me with evidence that there is collusion between males to keep females out of the creative department.
All I’m reading here are excuses by sulking paranoid females thinking there’s some sort of conspiracy at hand.
Not one piece of evidence of collusion.
Let’s re-frame: Imagine you’re a law graduate and you applied for a job in a firm where all the partners had been to the same school. 90% of the lawyers there had been to that school too. You didn’t, but you’d done bloody well at the school you had attended, then flown through uni, but no job for you. Then you find out they’d hired six people who’d all gone to the same school as the partners. They say they hired ‘on merit’. They make you feel petulant for questioning their hiring policies. They say maybe you’re just no good.
Absolutely no disrespect to TSS whatsover, they are a great company, and there are some great creatives in Auckland. I think you’re kind of missing the point. There weren’t any female creatives there, that was mine, do you think that is reflective of our industry… you tell me?
There are loads of strong women working in production companies and many great female directors, more than once, for no particular reason, I’ve heard male creatives say ‘they’d prefer to work with a guy director’… but that’s another discussion entirely.
Male and female creatives all go to the same school. AWARD School.
Can we also please see a breakdown of LGBTQI representatives in creative departments? And while you’re at it ethnic minorities please.
SHOUTOUT TO PCPRINCIPAL. I’m PCSydney Bro.
Also worth noting, maybe most young female graduates choose to start their careers client side. Almost every one of my clients is a woman.
Could the statistic be influenced by who the ECDs prefer to drink with?
I get jobs when there’s grog and man talk involved.
Which I think is bullshit and wrong and cave man, mind you.
I was amused by the poster who referred to 1998 as ‘the good old days’.
Thanks for the laugh.
Thank you
A man in Australia is 97% times more likely to become a CD than a woman.
Yet there is NO rational, logical, scientific or statistical evidence that women are in fact less creative than men.
This Campaign Brief gender break down left me feeling a range of emotions….
…..sick, sad, rage, bewildered, upset …..I grieve for all the years I have squandered feeling there was something wrong with me or my work. And I have plenty of awards.I just never had a chance did I?
I have been in this business over 20 years and I had no idea the gender bias toward men it was THAT bad. 25 Vs 2, 38 Vs 3, 30 Vs 0……
This has to change as I said there is NO rational, logical, scientific of statistical evidence that women are less creative than men.
But we now have plenty of evidence to show that they are not been given the chance to be in this country anyway.
Hey Lynchy, your stats for JWT Melb are a tad out of date. We now have 7 women and 15 blokes. With another senior (female) creative due to start in two weeks.
One of those 7 women is a CD. And that’s me. I’ve been a CD for 8 years. I’ve never ‘lost out’ on a senior role or promotion to a guy. I’ve worked hard & it’s paid off. I don’t buy into this gender debate. Just get on with making ads, being a good person and enjoying this industry that we’re all pretty lucky to be part of.
And get your (male & female) arses down to the MADC After Party on Dec 3rd to see what a truly great ad community we have in Melbourne.
Over here in the States (at least in the agency I’m in) there are a bunch of senior female creatives – certainly way higher than the supposed 3% figure.
Most of them have children. But here’s the thing: they don’t have any kind of balance in their lives. They’re cut a little more slack than the men, with regards to weekends and after hours, but not a lot.
Their kids are in child care. They have nannies. They’re working their arses off, inside and outside of the office.
There are a lot of unhappy fathers here too, who would love to spend more time with their kids. It’s just that society places way more pressure on women to be the primary carer, that men get let off the hook and women don’t.
It’s blindingly obvious that in a job where you are genuinely expected to live, eat and breathe the work. Where margins are skinny and hours are long. Where you win awards and pitches after hours (and for the sake of your career you NEED to win awards and pitches)…
if you don’t live in a society with an enlightened approach to the whole business of parenting being a joint concept,and not the woman’s lot, you’re pretty fucked.
If you’re a woman and you want kids and you want to work in advertising as a creative, you really have two choices:
Choice One: Prioritise your career, and fit your kids around that. Over in the US, you can do this because senior wages are high enough for families to afford the kind of home help you need to pull this off. But understand you will not be doing cartwheels at the amount of time you get with your kids. You’re effectively outsourcing that part of your life.
Choice Two: Prioritise your children, and accept that you’ll never have a top senior gig because those gigs get earned by people who live, eat and breathe the job. Man, or woman. They reward and value the obsessed. Not the balanced. And that’s not a sexism thing (although the end result is the same because more men are able to be work-obsessed than women).
But if you’re in Australia, you’re in a high-cost economy where Choice One probably isn’t an option, because you don’t get paid enough and childcare is horrendously expensive. So what happens is you find yourself with only Choice Two (working in a substandard agency or freelancing).
What really needs to happen is a societal shift where paternal/maternal is treated as two sides of the same coin, and men are expected and ENCOURAGED to take on as much of the parenting as women.
Only then will we be able to offer genuine equality of opportunity inside advertising creative departments.
It’s a much bigger issue than just what goes on inside Leo Burnett Sydney and its counterparts. Of course female creatives are no better or worse than their male counterparts. The problem is that our society makes it incredibly difficult for women in the workforce once they start a family.
And the reason why advertising creative departments are so hideously male-centric in senior roles is in large part due to the exceptionally family-unfriendly nature of being an advertising creative.
There has to be a better way, and I wish it was as simple as just committing to hiring and promoting more women. But it isn’t.
Maybe I’m naive, but I’ve never seen myself as a ‘female creative’. I’ve been employed for 8 years because people liked my work, I cut the bullshit out and just got on with it, and I guess having a personality helped too. But my last full-time job at one of the bigger agencies was challenging. The better briefs were given to the males…during a department desk change, the ECD at the time made all the female creatives sit together…the male CDs on the better accounts had egos that couldn’t handle an opinion, especially a female one. I could go on. Even the male creatives noticed these issues. But the real problem in the industry stems from those at top who are still clinging onto the ‘old boys club’ style of advertising and it’s evident in the work when you employ the same prototypes to product it. That’s why I gave up on the Australian industry. Now I get to work on the best briefs I’ve ever worked on in my entire career for CDs who see me as a ‘creative’, not a ‘female creative’.
Agencies love to waffle on about how much they’re like startups and tech companies.
But tech companies accepted a long time ago that they need diversity to be able to make good products. If you only have upper-middle class white men designing for you, your products will—consciously or unconsciously—only reflect their worldview.
THAT’S why you need to hire based on diversity. Because otherwise the stuff you make will not hit the breadth of audience you want.
Don’t kid yourselves. Aussie agencies are a sausage fest. Case in point: http://dt.com.au/about-us/leadership-team/
It’s not just female creatives who are under represented in creative departments. What about the 50+? Most creative directors are either intimidated by anyone older than them or prefer to intimidate those younger than them. Aging doesn’t calcify one’s creativity, but rather increases it through experience and the ability to relate to the consumer. Does a 25 year old really understand what it is like to be a 45 year old single mother? No. They rely on the planners, which probably explains why so much advertising misses the mark. Now, consider the fact that we live in a country with an ever growing older demographic, where are CDs going to find their ‘pets’ in the future?
Why did these numbers change from 2 days ago ?
Saatchis dept have grown 3 women suddenly
CB post 2 days ago-
Sydney
Leo Burnett (38 men, 3 women)
M&C Saatchi (32 men, 6 women)
Saatchi & Saatchi (12 men, 0 women)
While I agree it’s an issue I can’t think of too many ‘rockstar’ female creatives waiting in the wings to become the next superstar cd in this country.
Conversely, there is an oversupply of men with more trophies and more experience than an ECD could need sitting at the senior / cd level ‘waiting room’. Even former ECDs returning from overseas are struggling to get senior roles.
The previous generation all went out and started their own shops, this generation is clinging on for dear life in the big network agencies.
With pretty much all the recruiters and internal hiring managers / heads of talent being female, I don’t think it’s a male female issue. It’s a hirers market in this town and there are a lot of great creatives here.
@Geriatric with squeakers: You should check out Whybin Melbourne’s creative department. A bunch of crusty, old, white men totally out of touch with anything post 1996. Did you see that ‘girl power’ ANZ ad? *Blech*.
There’s your reason for kicking out the oldies!
@ Expat: agree 100%. Its such a shame we cannot address this core issue somehow. Other industries make it work, in fact our clients do! There’s a whole heap of very senior women in big companies making family & job work. When I worked in an agency (currently on mat leave) we made meetings around client days off, ‘needs to be after 10am’ (dropping kids off) or ‘no later than 4’ (picking kids up). I have no doubt that if we made our industry more family friendly we’d have happier men & women applying for senior roles….and more balanced PR photos!
Maybe you should post more often – your response really hits the nail on the head and opens up an interesting area in this debate. Why do we all buy into the culture that to do great work you have to be chained to your desk all the hours that god sends? Let’s be honest, is it necessary? If we were all forced to go home every day at 5pm, perhaps we’d all be more productive? Spend less time screwing around on Facebook and chatting in the kitchen? And perhaps it would sort out the truly talented – those who are good enough to win awards and get the job done in normal, reasonable hours- from the rest. Failing that, it might make upper management hire more creative staff, so that we’re not all constantly run ragged trying to do too much.
@ Expat you have it right. Yes, there are still agencies where old fashion discrimination is alive and well but it’s the intolerance to parental responsibilities that is really terrible. Men experience it too when they never see their kids because they’ve finished at 10 five days running. But when you’re the mum that’s not an option. The industry makes you chose between your kids and your job. Period. And none if these ecds – many of which have kids – stop and say let’s address this. They need to or they can continue to fill their creative departments with white men in casual shoes who spend too much time on YouTube.
Don’t male creatives have babies too?
It kind of depends on your definition of what a ‘rockstar’ is…..
I know 2 award winning Australian female CD’s who created and won 90% of their agencies business.
They were both replaced by ‘Rockstar’ male CDs who immediately rebadged themselves as ECD’s. These men lost all of the business[ we are talking 5 large pieces ] the non superstar women CD’s won and have won none themselves.
Aren’t we running a business here?
Why do recruiters, ECD’s and even CEO’s and MD’s define ‘superstars’ as someone with bag of scam induced awards?
The very large agency I work at in Melbourne has a creative team that has 26% women. Of those, 29% are CDs.
Most senior creative female parents are the primary caregiver and want to work 3-4 days a week. 99.9% (I made that figure up) of creative jobs are full-time. 14% of mothers say the ideal situation for them is a full-time job, compared to 72% of fatheers (Pew Research Center survey 2007).
So if you want more senior females in creative roles – and most clients do – brief recruiters on the odd 8am-5pm 4-day week creative role. After all, if the agency can work around 4-day week Suits on return from maternity leave, the agency can do the same for creative female parents.
You may be surprised how much senior talent’s out there, and how efficient she is with her precious time. Just don’t expect her to be down the pub on long lazy lunches like you: she’ll be working her guts out so she can go food shopping at lunch time, and get work out before 4:59pm so she can collect the kids from daycare/after school care. She’ll make her deadlines, even if she has to work on the way home, then again after she’s fed and put the kids to bed.
But she’ll love her job, be loyal to your agency, understand mothers – and all the delight and shit that comes with it – and your diverse clients will love her for it.