Creative Social and Creative Equals look to 'redress the balance in the creative department' with initiative for female CDs
Creative Social and Creative Equals are pooling their resources to launch a new training programme for senior female creatives geared towards giving them the tools they need to thrive, and achieve a 50:50 gender split in most creative departments within five years.
Dubbed CS for She (with CE), the initiative will six-month initiative is aimed at female associate creative directors and creative directors, with the aim of providing more routes to success for female marketers by working with agencies and recruiters.
CS for She (with CE) will focuse on developing the core skills of creative leadership, such as culture building, negotiation and public speaking in a "creative and inspiring way," according to the industry groups.
Confirmed trainers include: Fura Johannesdottir, group executive creative director at R/GA; Hillary Gallo, author of The Power of Soft; Iain Tait, executive creative director at Wieden & Kennedy; Lynne Parker, founder of Funny Women and Richard Robinson managing partner of Oystercatchers. Other partners include D&AD, She Says, Stripes and Token Man.
Daniele Fiandaca, co-founder of creative social, said: "We’ve been working hard over the last three years to inspire more female creative talent. We hope that this programme helps redress the balance in the creative department. Diversity continues to be one of the biggest challenges in the creative industries and we hope this can help make a difference."
One of the aims of Creative Equals is to double the number of female creative leaders year-on-year with the goal of producing creative departments with a 50:50 male to female ratio over the next five years. "We work with recruitment, agencies and industry to help shape these critical career pathways, as well as provide frameworks to help women stay and thrive in the industry," commented Ali Hanan, founder of Creative Equals.
The move comes as the diversity debate in ad land shows no sign of slowing down. Earlier this month, both General Mills and HP implemented diversity quotas for their creative agencies to encourage them to hire more women and people of colour. While the approach was lauded by some luminaries, including 4As president Nancy Hill, other senior marketers have questioned the diversity by numbers approach.
First published by Rebecca Stewart-20 September 2016 12:01pm, The Drum.
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/09/20/creative-social-and-creative-equals-look-redress-the-balance-the-creative-department
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