Dispatches From Dreamland: The 3% Problem

It’s a startling statistic to learn that only three per cent of creative directors in advertising are female, especially when women control over USD20 trillion globally in annual consumer spending.

This fact led Kat Gordon (pictured above) to organise the very first 3% Conference in San Francisco last year to explore why this is happening, and how the situation can change. The conference, taking place this year on October 16 and 17 highlights a long-overdue conversation about why advertising remains a boy's club in a woman’s world. Gordon is also founder and creative director of Maternal Instinct, an agency that specialises in marketing to women.  

“It’s such an unbelievably mystifying statistic that has stalled for the last 30 years,” explains Gordon during a presentation to women creatives at Deutsch LA. “If we know that women influence 80 per cent of household spending but only 3 per cent of creative directors are actually women, there’s an enormous disconnect.”

While remarkable strides in market power and social position have taken place for women over the years they remain an undervalued and underestimated segment of the marketplace.

“Women are the most powerful consumer segment in the world but have stated in numerous studies that advertisers just don’t understand them,” she continues. “That’s because agencies don’t have enough women in the creation of the work to represent them. Yet everything is a female brand because women are the superset not the subset.”

A Burgeoning Demographic

Gordon is correct on a global scale. Women represent a burgeoning demographic, with USD13 trillion in total yearly earnings that could reach $18 trillion in the next five years. The Harvard Business Review recently went as far as to say that women represent a growth market bigger than China and India combined – more than twice as large, in fact. Taking these numbers into account it would be foolish to ignore or underestimate the female consumer.

Yet ads featuring women in gender specific roles continue to be made, with spots more insulting than insightful as women play out roles in shockingly clichéd ways – witness mom mopping the kitchen floor while husband and child look on in total amazement.

“Ads depicting homes with a working dad, stay at home mum and child under 18 only account for four per cent of the US population,” highlights Gordon on outdated marketing narratives. “The fear is that marketing to women in better ways will turn off male customers – but strong research by brands such as IKEA, Midas and Ford demonstrate how improved marketing to women actually produces higher male customer satisfaction. That’s because when you are meeting the expectations of women you are generally exceeding the expectations of men.”

A Change is Needed

Gordon is making a number of pit stops in various cities in the US and Canada before this year’s 3% Conference to build the case for more female creative directors in adland. But what needs to change for women to grow in the industry?

“Women need to see themselves as an asset,” says Gordon on the road ahead. “There is so much more awareness of how important the female perspective is today, but it needs to improve. I have seen so many women bench themselves and let someone else run the meeting when it was actually their own work. You have to be the one selling.”

“When I entered advertising I was often the only female in the department,” adds Karen Costello, EVP and group creative director at Deutsch LA, on hand at the event to express hew own views and insights on the subject.

“The 3% Conference is important because we are all passionate about figuring out how to get female creatives entering the business to stay, and what we as women can do to stop sabotaging our efforts. I try really hard to nurture females that work with me. I was the 12^th employee at Deutsch and came here because the agency had a lot of strong women. It’s important to be in an environment where you feel supported.”

Not Rocket Science

Gordon feels the industry need to, “learn the basics of marketing to women. It’s not rocket science. Make the work human and earn the right to have a conversation with female consumers. Don’t sanitise the work.”

While so many men in adland make the decisions, Gordon and the 3% Conference are not about to insinuate that guys aren’t an important facet in creatively marketing to women:

“Men can absolutely market to women masterfully, that’s not the problem at all,” she explains. “It’s just that more representation of women in creative roles needs to happen. I have an agenda to expose the realities of what makes being a woman in advertising hard, and help the people who are here as much as humanly possible. After all, creativity is a gender neutral affair.”