Media Articles

Women miss out on top advertising jobs

The glass ceiling in the advertising industry is as strong as ever, according to a new study that claims while there are plenty of women working in the sector there is a dearth of females in top jobs.

Women continue to make up approximately half of the workforce but account for only 15.1% of managing directors or chief executives, according to a survey by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising survey of the media buying, advertising and marketing communications sectors.

The percentage of women at the top has more than doubled from 7% in 1998, but increased by only one percentage point since 2004. At a broader management level female representation in the industry was 26.8%.

Women in advertising became a hot issue last year when WPP senior creative Neil French wasforced to resign after reportedly saying there were so few in senior roles because they were"crap".

Mr French's remarks caused a storm of protest and forced the WPP chief executive, Sir Martin Sorrell, to apologise.

Jim Marshall, the chairman of Starcom MediaVest UK and the IPA Media Futures Group, said the IPA survey showed the industry was changing too slowly.

"Overall it is good news that the industry was in growth mode during 2005, albeit cautiously. The growth is encouraging, as is the broadening of the industry, with more females in senior positions and greater ethnic diversity, although this could be at a faster rate," he said.

The IPA survey reveals that 15,751 people worked in advertising last year, up from 15,190 in 2004.

People working in the advertising and marketing communications industry were likely to under 30, Londoners and "overwhelmingly white", it concludes.

The IPA study found 93.2% of advertising and marketing employees were of white origin, 2.4% Asian, 2.4% black, 1% mixed origin and 1.1% from other backgrounds. The non-white figure of 6.8% compared with 5.1% in 2004 and 6.2% in 2003.

London is increasing its stranglehold on the industry; the survey showed the size of agencies in the capital increased while their regional counterparts got smaller.

The study found 75.5% of the industry's employees worked in London. And the average agency headcount in London increased from 82.8 in 2004 to 87.5 last year, while the average size of regional agencies fell from 41.4 to 37.6 employees.

Advertising and marketing industry workers were 33.4 years old on average, with 48.1% of the workforce under the age of 30.

Young, white and super skinny? We don't buy it, women tell advertisers

The advertising world's perennial reliance on young, white and extremely thin models has long faced criticism from feminists and health campaigners. Now, new research at a leading UK business school suggests it might be doing something else: harming companies' balance sheets.

In what is believed to be the first such global survey of female consumers' attitudes, the research says women respond more favourably to a brand if the models it uses somehow mirror their own identities.

Advertisers cannot, however, simply enlist a few fuller-figured models, says Ben Barry, who is carrying out the research at Cambridge University's Judge business school: "In general, people have a more favourable reaction to brands that show models who represent people's age, size and background.

"It's not necessarily enough to show one component which is similar - people really wanted to see someone who represents them in all three factors."

Such an approach has been used by a handful of brands in recent years, notably the Dove skincare range, which made a deliberate virtue of using older and larger models in its award-winning Campaign for Real Beauty.

But elsewhere, particularly in the fashion and luxury goods industries, the traditional reliance on so-called aspirational advertising has limited change, despite high-profile campaigns against perceived racism and the encouragement of unhealthy female physiques within modelling.

The study, which is still being completed, canvasses the opinions of 2,000 women in the UK, US, China, India, Canada, Brazil, Kenya and Jordan.

Barry commissioned advertising agencies to produce a number of realistic print campaigns for products, including consumer and luxury goods. Half were made using what the study termed"traditionally attractive models" - aged 16 to 24, white and around US size zero, the equivalent of a UK size four - while the remainder pictured "realistically attractive models" of a range of ages, races and shapes.

The findings were marked. Aside from women aged under 25, who were less likely to object to an abundance of young, white, ultra-slim models, and Chinese consumers, who actively preferred them, most of those surveyed felt positive towards the brands that used the more diverse models.

A small number of earlier studies, mainly carried out by psychologists, have suggested that the use of excessively slim models can create a bad impression with female consumers. But Barry's work goes further: as well as looking at the issue from a business and marketing viewpoint, it additionally considers race and age.

The latter is a particular factor for companies to take note of given the relatively high spending power of older women.

The study quotes the reaction of one 50-plus participant to a mocked-up ad for a luxury product using a very youthful model: "It's a slap in the face to show this young woman because she'd never have the money to shop there whereas I do."

Another key finding was that while women preferred to see attainable images of beauty, this did not mean they were against glamour.

"The women wanted models who looked like they were part of the fashion industry but also looked like them," Barry says.

"It made them feel that they, too, were included in the industry and were considered beautiful. It's not just about taking a plain mugshot of a real woman."

Barry, who previously set up an agency for non-traditional models in his native Canada, says businesses needed to take note: "It's clear that in order to unleash new economic potential you need to represent your consumer physically.

"If you're a big fashion retailer and you're going to hire 10 models, you should make sure that each one of them represents a different aspect of your consumers."

While alluring for those who believe the promotion of unrealistic body images is inherently wrong, advertising experts warn that such studies are treated with extreme caution in the commercial world.

"This kind of research may have some interesting insights, but it's insights into the way consumers talk and think about the adverts when you prompt them," said Paddy Barwise, professor of marketing at the London Business School.

"There is a gap between what they say, particularly in the presence of other women, and what they would do actually at the point of sale, and that's a big gap, not a small gap."

But he added: "I think that we will see a trend away from very, very skinny models, because there is a social trend against it."

The new feminists: lipstick and pageants

YES, YOU CAN WEAR LIPSTICK AND BE A FEMINIST. THE F WORD IS BEING REBRANDED

You could be forgiven, reading the headlines and opinion columns of recent weeks, for thinking that you had woken up in 1978. At protests greeting the recent Miss University London beauty pageants, there were screams of moral outrage, pickets at the entrances to nightclubs and yells of “Objectification” ringing out across pavements, as angry young women in duffel coats protested at cute young women in ball gowns. On the one hand, it was cheering to see that feminist activism had not died, but on the other, it might have struck you as looking a bit, well, retro.

For Marie Berry, 27, who started up her own feminist magazine, KnockBack, three years ago, it certainly didn’t advertise a brand of feminism she identifies with. “I thought the protesters looked a bit silly, a bit like a stereotypical idea of what a feminist should be. The slogan was ‘SOAS is for education, not for your ejaculation’, but I don’t think it’s a gender issue. This competition wasn’t about men. It’s for girls.”

A beauty pageant might not be your average woman’s idea of fun, but these contestants were all girls enlisted at top-notch universities, and who all had chosen to be there. Targets ripe for feminist outrage? Not according to the American feminist Katie Roiphe. “I think the proper reaction to a beauty pageant these days is to be bored by it. I would have thought that old version of feminism, which was violently opposed to lipstick and high heels, had died out by now. It’s an extinct image of feminism — that you can’t be both frivolous and serious or care about clothes and read books at the same time. And, in a way, it’s sort of depressing that these same old-fashioned battles keep on being recycled.”

Take heart, sisters, for there is a new breed of feminist out there that is reinventing the ideology. Subscribing to the original feminist theories of equality (equal pay, equal rights and the importance of a right to choose), they pick the fights that mean something to them, ignoring the elements of feminist politics they find irrelevant. For Berry, whose zine is billed as the anti-women’s mags women’s mag (cover lines include ‘The magazine for women who aren’t silly bitches on a diet’), that fight is about how women are represented in the media. “KnockBack started as a spoof women’s magazine,” she says. “We despise Cosmo and Heat. They broadcast a fascination with getting boyfriends, getting married, make-up, appearance and gossip that appeal to the least desirable parts of our emotional spectrum — jealously, gossip and being mean. And that’s not what we care about. Being a girl isn’t like that for us.”

Though that doesn’t mean they can’t take an interest: “As a woman, you can’t not buy shoes and wear dresses. Plus all of that stuff is fun — it doesn’t take away from your power as a woman.”

One fan of KnockBack is Zadie Smith, who wrote to them to say: “Your zine made me feel that the present situation for women is possibly not as absolutely f***ing awful as I had previously felt it to be. It was a little ray of pink and black hope. Keep up the good work, from an old feminist, zx.”

For Dunja Knezevic, 26, and Victoria Keon-Cohen, 21, the target is entirely different. Both models, they are campaigning for fair working conditions in the fashion industry and fighting for the establishment of the first models’ union. Their strand of feminism shuns gender altogether. “For us, it has always been about equality for everybody in our workplace,” says Knezevic. “We are fighting for rights for both male and female models.” And while not branding herself a feminist, she is keen to insist: “I don’t think being a model means that I can’t be one.”

It is impossible to stick to the battle lines that once seemed so clear, but that is also why it is possible to be both a model and a feminist. At the same time as being more emancipated than ever, we have never been more obsessed with youth, thinness and celebrity. Ask any woman if she minds being judged on her looks, and she will say yes. But ask her if she would like to look better, and she will also say yes to that. Beauty is power, and our relationship with it is complicated, as are our ideas on sexuality. On the one hand, we feel empowered; on the other, drooled over. Where to go in between? Jordan may have fashioned herself as a caricature of male fantasy, but she is also an extremely rich and successful working mother — and what is unfeminist about that?

What is different about this new wave is that it is careful to allow these contradictions to play out. According to Ellie Levenson, author of the forthcoming The Noughtie Girl’s Guide to Feminism, it is just this flexibility that identifies it. “In the past, you had to subscribe to a whole set of beliefs to be a feminist, including how you should look and behave. But Noughties women have made it their own. It’s like a pick-and-mix feminism, where you can choose the bits you care about yourself.”

As Jess McCabe, editor of The F Word, an online site for contemporary feminism, says: “The point of feminism isn’t to replace one set of expectations with another. It is to get rid of that whole dynamic. It wouldn’t be healthy to say, ‘You shouldn’t be wearing make-up’, as that is unfeminist in a way.”

Phoebe Frangoul, 27, editor of Pamflet, a self-styled “feminist fashion zine”, is also keen to embrace just such a brand of modern feminism and has campaigned heavily for the right to be both a feminist and glamorous. “I write about the right to wear high heels and still call yourself a feminist. I don’t feel they’re mutually exclusive, and my friends don’t either.” She laments the extreme feminism on show at the LSE and other universities, saying it puts people off the cause. “There are so many people out there who wouldn’t describe themselves as feminists, but they blatantly are in their actions. They’re just scared of the word. If you asked Gwen Stefani if she was a feminist, she would probably say no, although Charlotte Church has said she is. I don’t know if we’re third-wave or post-feminist, but we definitely want to be all things and don’t feel like we can’t be.”

“One of the most unappealing things about the feminist movement right from its inception was its tendency to judge other women,” says Roiphe. And, given the polarising of opinion between old-school feminists and modern young women engaged with popular culture — which, like it or lump it, is obsessed with celebrity, consumption and youth — there is much room for judgment. (See The Guide Association’s new manifesto on the sexualisation of young girls and Germaine Greer’s recent berating of Cheryl Cole as “too thin to be a feminist” as yet more proof.) “I do feel it’s time for those feminists to step aside,” says Frangoul. “It’s like, we’re grateful for what you did, but it’s time for you to hand over. We’ve got a different world-view, and we might have something different to say.”