“To crack the glass ceiling you don’t need a sharp stick, you need a sharp suit”, says one of the tube ads. It got me thinking, what do women need to do to succeed in advertising? It used to be a Don Draper dominated industry, but it is not the case anymore. Our recent research showed that women are a 55% majority in Arena and we are better educated than men around us*.
Following that emancipated thinking, four of us went to The Young Women on Board meet up on Tuesday where successful women in media told us how they got there. The room, filled with 100 girls beginning in the industry, listened with anticipation and a lot of laughter – cheers for a brilliant stand-up comedian MC and free wine!
After having a quick poll between the four of us, we decided the most interesting persona was Liz from Start JudgeGill. Her view on life is that you have two choices: drugs or career. So girls, we can’t have it all… She shared her secret of how she became successful: she talks to as many people as possible for at least 5 minutes and if they are worth it, she continues the conversation and eventually sucks the life out of them.
Another speaker, Katie, recently changed industries from Social Media to Entertainment in Sean Parker’s agency theAudience. According to her, it is all about relationships when it comes to your career and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Sophie from Virgin Media is a good example of this advice. She is about to do a big shift in her career from Marketing to Commercial. Even though she is not good with numbers (her words), she hopes this role allow her to be involved more in decision making and setting goals for the business.
My main thought from the evening was that we’re still young and there are plenty of successful ladies to look up to. It is not about accessing the old boys’ club anymore, the world’s our oyster!
* While 62% of men at Arena have a degree and 11% have a postgraduate education, 72% of women have a degree and 19% of them are postgrads. Source: internal survey.
By Sonia Waszkowiak, Content Marketing Executive