The "Birthday Gift Test": the birthday gift for your wife or best birthday gifts for girlfriend is coming up. You're not sure what to get her. So you ask whom:
A. Her best girlfriend
B. Your best guy friend
Kat Gordon, the founder of the "3% Conference," a movement dedicated to building a business case for more female creative directors in advertising, posed that question to a packed house in the Boston office of Digitas. It struck a chord with me.
Gordon's 3% Conference is so named because, alarmingly, only 3% of the nation's creative directors are women. Three percent! Yet women make the great majority of consumer purchases.
Which brings us back to the Birthday Gift Test. The answer is obvious, right? You ask the girlfriend because she knows what women want, in general, but she also knows what your wife or girlfriend wants, in particular. Now look at the senior ranks of your agency's creative department. Full of men I bet. You wouldn't ask a man to help you with your wife's birthday present, but you would trust men to communicate effectively with millions of women who stand between you and a sale?
I was a panelist at the event Kat Gordon spoke, along with Alyssa Toro, Edward Boches, Sue Baylow, and Deb Siegel, and I voiced my belief that the "3% problem" is not just a political problem, it's not just a glass-ceiling problem, and it's not just another tension between the sexes. To me, the 3% problem is an best gift idea problem, which makes it all of our problem.
If you believe Steven Johnson (author of, "Where Good Ideas Come From") that new ideas are the result of two different existing ideas colliding, then it stands to reason that creative teams with differing perspectives increase the odds of these new collisions, or new ideas. With only 3% of all creative directors being women, there is only one perspective at the top
Forget that it's the "right thing to do." Fixing this problem is in everyone's interest.
Men: if you truly want the work you are creative directing to be better, then adding women to the mix will add a new dimension to the work you are supervising. It's in your interest, men.
Agency: with more women at the top and more female perspective in the creative mix, your creative work will be more creative across all accounts. It's in your interest, Agencies.
Client: with the added female perspective at the top of your agency, the work they present to you will likely be more creative and effective. It's in your interest, Clients.
Wall Street: with more effective creative work from public companies comes increased sales, share, and stock prices. It's in your interest, Wall Street.
Economy: (might as well) with the increased value of public companies who use agencies with more women at the top, the stock market will go up, thereby helping our economy. It's in your interest, Economy.
Life doesn't have to get in the way of the idea.
According to Kat Gordon, the problem is that, for aspiring female creatives, life gets in the way. It's at the exact moment when women who have been in advertising for a while, doing well, and are hitting their stride, that the pressures of child rearing can present a painful choice. Do I continue in advertising and face the ridicule that comes with having to leave the office to pick up my kids (leaving the rest of my team behind to work), or do I just quit and focus on my family? I'm not here to criticize either choice or deem either "right" or "wrong," but I am here to challenge agencies to create a culture where the choice to stay in advertising is easier for talented women.
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