Alison Garnett wants a companion. Not a romantic partner, but a peer at work who doesn’t have a beard, who shows no interest in knives or flashlights. A fellow female creative director.
“There are three male CDs. I’m the female CD,” Garnett, who works at SapientNitro, told the audience during a panel discussion at The 3% Conference Toronto, which took place Tuesday. “I just feel like sometimes I need to have that one other person there. I do walk into meetings where I am the only female.”
Building on similar events that started in the U.S., The 3% Toronto Conference is trying to spark a deeper discussion about diversity in the ad agency space at a time when many female executives say the attitudes of the Mad Men era have not entirely disappeared.
“We were in a pitch a few weeks ago and the arc of it was female empowerment,” recalled Christina Gliha, group creative director at Juniper Park\TBWA. “A guy in the room literally said, ‘Um, #LikeAGirl has been done. Dove’s done it. That’s over now.’ I said, ‘This is a train you guys better get on, because it’s where things are going. It’s not some bloody trend.”
Some shops are actively tackling the problem with their hiring practices. Stephen Jurisic, founding partner and executive creative director of John St., said 50% of his firm’s CDs are women. The benefits don’t stop at a more engaged workforce, he said, but directly address business growth challenges.
‘We’ll have clients who say, ‘I don’t know if I feel right about this team,’” he said, referring to pitch meetings populated entirely by men. “Clients are demanding (diversity) because they know it’s who they’re talking to.”
It’s not enough just to hire more women, though, 3% speakers said. It’s also about giving them meaningful work to make use of their talents.
“In one job, I got every retail account. I hate shopping! I buy everything from the Gap,” Garnett said. “I found myself just wishing for a car account or something else I could do.”
Agency execs also need to screen other members of the team carefully, Gliha said.
“In interviews, I always ask about ‘bro culture.’ And if I don’t get the right answer I’m not going there,” she said. “There’s this bizarre misconception that creative culture means being crass. That’s so not true.”
Christina Yu, executive creative director at Red Urban, suggested execs take a long-term view of the talent within their organization if they want to build a culture that thrives.
“Really think about succession planning, who you’re going to be bringing up in the pipeline,” she said. “If you’re conscious about doing that, it really will keep your agency diverse.”
And of course, being a role model is important. Garnett said she pays special attention to this, given she is the sole breadwinner in her home, where she has two daughters with her stay-at-home husband.
“I really want to make sure I’m paving the way,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of admiring the problem (of diversity) right now, rather than doing something about the problem. We need to actually start doing something about the problem.”
