In his Stray Thoughts column, Breandán O Broin, speaks out in support of IAPI’s Doyenne award, recently won by Google’s Cera Ward
Philosophy has never been a strong point among Ireland’s marketers. But one tends to get a better class of reference point at Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI) events. Colin Gordon of Glanbia sought the backing of the dour German philosopher at the announcement of this year’s IAPI Doyenne awards to honour Irish women in adland.
“And those seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who couldn’t hear the music” – Friedrich Nietzsche, as quoted by Colin Gordon at the IAPI Doyenne awards 2016
It was a breakfast with not a full Irish in sight; smoothies instead of sausages being the dish of the day. Gordon said marketers of all fluid genders need to be ever-open to new influences and varying viewpoints. Repeating the mistakes of yesteryear may well be where madness lies, but merely repeating the successes of yesteryear is no great shakes either.
Lightening no longer tends to strike twice in marketing. When it’s done it’s done, to paraphrase the slogan of despairing motor car dealers. What was I doing dining at the Shelbourne at such an early hour? Slothful freelancer that I am; male, white, over-aged and no doyenne, that’s for sure. What’s even more certain is that I’m not a doyette.
Girls allowed: Tribute was paid to top female executives in adland and the industry’s rising stars at the IAPI Doyenne awards breakfast in the Shelbourne Hotel, sponsored by Evoke.ie. Pictured are from left, Meabh Connellan,Vizeum; Sharon Murray, eBow; Michelle O’Keefe, Electric Media, overall winner Cera Ward, Google and Astrid Brennan, FleishmanHillard.
Someone within earshot had suggested ‘doyette’ as a more accurate descriptor for an award limited to women the right side of 37. In this audience-member’s understanding, a true doyenne was not just “the most respected or prominent woman in a particular field” as the event documentation told us. A true doyenne needed the wisdom of years in her armoury; a true doyenne had long learned not to give a flying fiddlers about the Court of Public Opinion.
She was way above and beyond all that. Catherine Donnelly was the doyenne supreme of our adland’s Mad Men community. (La Donnelly is currently on location in A Higher Place, enthralling members of the Virtual Other World gathered in reverence at her Manolo-clad feet). I was in the more earthly (but still heavenly) Shelbourne on the bidding of my editor and at the invitation of IAPI’s Tania Banotti – but also out of a degree of personal curiosity.
I’d come to listen and to hopefully learn. Perhaps I was trying fitfully to keep abreast of the ever-altering zeitgeist? In which case, welcome to the club. The elusive zeitgeist continually eludes us all. IAPI president Aidan Greene got proceedings underway. His clear message echoed the thoughts of a Fianna Fáil under Bertie Ahern, insofar as while much has been done to advance the cause of female roles in adland, much more remains to be done.
The good news is that 73 per cent of IAPI member agencies are now paying some degree of maternity benefit out of their own profitable pockets. Halleluiah, one might say; but what on earth are the remaining 17 per cent thinking? Perhaps they only employ nun-like postulants who spend their long days and chaste nights in utter devotion to their agency’s cause?
On the downside, less than one in five of upper-echelon management roles are occupied by women, with under six per cent achieving Greene’s definition of being “a final arbiter”. Camilla Harrison of Anomaly London was the event’s keynote speaker and she certainly qualifies as an ‘agency boss’. Before Anomaly, she held senior posts at M&C Saatchi.
Entertaining and challenging, Harrison encouraged the mainly-female audience to adopt a gender-positive attitude based on the premise that “the more you can see it, the more you can be it”. Senior advertising women must be prepared to be visible and to be ardent advocates for and mentors of other women, acknowledging the formidable Madeleine Albright.
Albright, who Bill Clinton appointed as the first female Secretary of State, was of the view that a seventh circle of hell is reserved for women who ignore women or, even worse, act as promotion blockers to other females. Albright said as much when criticising young women who support Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton.
Harrison realises that the chaotic client-dependent, obsessively subservient world of advertising militates against the life-patterns of women in the workplace who also have children in the homeplace. Never apologise, never explain is her advice. If your terms and conditions say you leave at five o’clock, then leave at five o’clock.
In return for a degree of agreed flexibility, your agency benefits from the organisational skills and improved levels of productivity that working mothers bring to both their day and night jobs. But she equally accepts that shepherding female creatives through to higher levels of agency management has so far proved beyond her.
She’s still working on it though. Fail again; fail better, as the man says. So what was it that prevailed on the IAPI jury (one male, five female) to be positive about the future? Might it be that the ultimate success of the single-gender Doyenne awards be measured by the removal of any need to hold them in the first place as a way of correcting adland’s gender imbalance?
Gordon believes the answer lies in the unique degrees of awareness, commitment and determination evidenced by this year’s short-listed candidates for the awards. They were particularly impressed by one candidate who declared her belief that sometimes the best plan was to have no plan. We cheered inwardly on two scores; creativity and confidence.
No man would ever have the cojones to admit to such a counter-intuitive career declaration mainly because most men would never have the imagination and self-confidence to think such an approach could ever yield benefits. Men are normally so busy not listening to the music that they regard the dancing going on around them as a form of madness.
The women who won Doyenne awards on International Women’s Day were of a mind not to be claiming credit for all they had already achieved; they were more likely to be asking “what else can we do?” For what it’s worth, Stray Thoughts has one radical idea to speed up the glacial pace at which women are rising to the top in the business world.
Make paternity leave obligatory for men in a similar way to how maternity leave is more or less demanded of women. Males play an active part in the production process after all; now let them share in the subsequent shit. Oblige men to suffer the slings and misfortunes of imposed career breaks and watch how quickly the glass boardroom ceiling shatters.
The reality is society responds positively to enforced radical measures – drink-driving bans, plastic bag charges, prohibitions on smoking, speed limits. Despite the best will in the world, significant progress in the role of women in the workplace will remain part of a liberal social agenda without ever becoming intrinsic to the commercial focus of global business.
Irish women must realise that successful career men do not rise to the top of the tree by accident or pure talent. In the main, they get there by being more bloody-minded than their male and female peers. It’s time not to debate, but to do. To quote Harrison, “when mum comes back in the office door, bullshit goes out the office door”.
