Alina Morais reports back from the Diversity Debate at Spikes Asia
Alina Morais, Regional PR Manager, APAC, reports back from the Diversity Debate at Spikes Asia.
The issue of diversity has been hotly debated in recent months, especially following controversial comments made by an agency chairman in the global ad industry. The topic was also the centre of a debate on Day 3 of Spikes Asia Festival of Creativity.
Representing Isobar at the debate was Jane Lin-Baden, CEO of Asia Pacific. She joined two other panelists, Tamara Ingram, CEO of JWT, and Philip Brett, Asia CEO of TBWA, in a panel moderated by Atifa Silk, the Brand Director for Campaign Asia.
Atifa kicked things off by saying around half of the people working in advertising globally are women, but when it comes to creative departments, it’s only 11% at best and that’s not even across all the markets.
One of the few female global CEOs in advertising, Tamara chimed in by expressing her disappointment that the current state of the ad industry “doesn’t represent the community we live in, and knowing the quality of ideas that we can generate if only the industry is equal to the world we populate”. She stressed that the industry needs to make enormous strides with policies and pipelines to make it happen.
Philip agreed, “We see a strong force of women in the agency. What women require is seeing a woman at the top. That will get more women wanting to come in to the industry.”
But in Asia particularly, there are cultural issues that might affect the industry from moving forward.
Jane observed that there is a “perception that certain personality traits are needed for management and that women might not possess those qualities.” She spoke about her own experience when she was running her startup and how it was difficult to really tackle the gender issue in some of these industries and how this needs to change.
There are clients globally that are really pushing this agenda and demanding the same from their agencies. But do clients in China care?
Jane thinks yes. “China as a market is more open to having women in business and the workforce overall. There are more and more female execs in the client side, but then again it’s not really about having more women, but to systematically create a diverse team. There are more women in the workforce, but there is still a need for diversity.”
It is a unique market in China in that there is a lot of women in senior roles, and this is especially evident at Isobar. Jane said, “There is a conscious effort to look at how to bring in talent who can scale up your organisation. We really require more consensus-building qualities. When I bring in these women, it because they have a different problem-solving approach from the existing team members.”
Unanimously, all panelists agreed that while there are women joining the industry, they do tend to ‘drop-off’ the higher up they go. In some markets, there are expected pathways for women i.e. get married by a certain age.
So what is needed to address this problem?
Jane said, “Culturally, it’s the leadership’s responsibility to encourage women to step up and be ambitious. Sometimes there is the stereotype that women shouldn’t be ambitious. We need to create a safe environment in which everybody can feel encouraged to grow, and to take up more responsibility without being judged by gender.”
On her own experience before taking up the CEO role at Isobar, Jane shared that she had discussed with her daughter first on the impact it would have on her. “It’s important for me to spend my journey with my family, but it doesn’t mean that I need to sacrifice the opportunity,” she revealed.
She added that, “Maternity leave shouldn’t be a punishment… after all, without motherhood, none of us would be here.” The reality is that it is a tough job to take care of a kid and work at the same time, but as an organization we need to create the space that allows women to come back. For instance, our agency in India has extended maternity leave.”
Philip concurred, citing a statistic where 40% of people felt they were not working due to pressures of family, “We see that, but what we have to look at is the environment we create and the working practices to allow people to make balanced choices, rather than to simply decide to stay or go.”
But gender diversity works both ways. Jane said, “In certain areas, some of the agency roles are predominantly held by women. And that’s where we need to have intervention to have more men and it needs to be consciously-driven. If you don’t set up a KPI then you will be going nowhere. If you want to see a drastic shift in the current situation, you need to make it the agenda.”
“What we need is to have a business that is truly representative of the environment that we are operating in, if we are not matching that or leading that, then we won’t be here 10 years from now,” Philip surmised.
Closing off the debate, Atifa said, “Diversity is an ongoing discussion and is something we definitely want to keep on the agenda, and Campaign Asia will be revisiting the topic throughout the year”.
