Above, from left: Clara McLaurin, founder and ECD of Remade; Jane Langley,
co-founder and ECD of Anti; Laura Cibilich, design director, CEO and founder of
Run Aotearoa.
Aotearoa’s contingent of female exec creative directors are a tiny bunch. Too tiny, most would agree. So how do we get more women into these top jobs? Three who’ve done it share their ideas. The good news is: we can all help.
Once upon a time, a TV advert from the government’s Employment and Vocational Guidance Service inspired a generation.
“Who’s that under the bonnet?” began the jingle, as a young woman emerged from beneath a car hood. “Who’s that checking the grain?” it asked, as another female apprentice smoothed off a piece of wood. “Who’s rewiring her parents’ house?” (The music, in a major key, is celebratory – woohoo, look at her go!) “Who’s directing the crane?”
There was a middle eight and another verse before the bloke stopped singing and delivered the payload: “Girls can do anything.”
80s earworm
If you remember that ad, you have nostalgic earworm now. You’re welcome. You might also be wondering what happened to those girls who saw it growing up in the 1980s.
Some took the hint and took up a trade. A good chunk of them went into advertising. They became suits, designers, copywriters. These women are in their 40s and 50s now. By rights they should be at the top of their game: CEOs, partners, exec creative directors.
And some of them are. Some female ECDs have taken the leap and started their own businesses. They’re thriving – they employ staff, land big accounts and win loads of awards.
You’d think, given the fair size of Aotearoa’s advertising sector, the proportion of women at ECD level is significant. Out of hundreds of agencies, there are many dozens, right?
In late January, NZ Marketing sat down with about a quarter of the country’s female ECD populace. The introductions didn’t take long – there were three of them.
How many?
There are maybe 12 or 15 women in Aotearoa who hold top creative directorships. About a third
of that number started their own businesses.
“We’re not a large percentage of the creative leadership population, but we are there,” says Clara McLaurin, founder and ECD of Remade.
Also around the table when we meet are Anti co-founder and ECD Jane Langley and Laura Cibilich, design director, CEO and founder of Run Aotearoa. They are hugely aware that the fraction of female creative leaders doesn’t match the high proportion of women in the industry. But rather than focus on the small size of their group, they prefer to concentrate on how to get more women into the top creative ranks – and the benefits that a range of lived experience brings to the work.
Cibilich says diversity is high on the agenda for many clients: “In my role and agency, we work a lot across different diversities, mainly ethnicity and a little bit of disability. And that’s more where the conversation is.”
She adds gender equality “shouldn’t even be a discussion any more” but “we do need to do more because we are not seeing that gender equality in our industry in creative leadership”.
All about people
“Advertising and marketing is really people driven. We are all about people. It’s not just about learning about people from research, it’s about people being involved in the process and drawing from lived experience,” says McLaurin.
“Clients are seeing the benefits of diversity within their own organisations, and are seeking that range of experience from their creative partners,” she adds.
“Being able to have diversity within the creative team is crucial, because ultimately they’re the people coming up with the ideas and allowing that diversity of thought to filter up through the creative department and into the presentations.
“And whether or not that can happen frequently is key to how good we are as an industry at doing our jobs.”
Jane Langley of Anti agrees there’s room for improvement when it comes to reflecting the audience agencies are serving.
“Women buy more shit,” she says. “They’re often the household shopper and the decision maker. And it’s not just with the groceries and FMCG things, it’s with the insurer and the bank and the car brand, the travel… We know this, we all know this and marketers know this.
“And I think that’s why it’s so interesting to see that marketing departments tend to be full of women – very smart, very talented women.”
While account service teams are often female dominated, creative teams have been “more of a boy’s domain”, she notes.
“So there’s work to be done there.”
The stats don’t lie
How much work remains will become clearer when the Commercial Communications Council releases the results from its latest census of the industry, due out later in 2025. The census is conducted every two years and most recent figures available at the time of writing show Aotearoa stands up fairly well compared to the rest of the world – at least when it comes to inclusion.
“New Zealand scores significantly higher than the global Inclusion Index benchmark (71% vs 63%), and has improved by 10 points since the 2021 wave (61%),” according to 2023’s findings.
While women were over-represented – making up 67% of advertisers and marketers compared to 50% of the general population – when it came to C-suite roles, just 6% of women in the industry occupied those positions, compared to 13% of men.
Comms Council CEO Simon Lendrum acknowledges the number of women in the top spots is low across the board, but points out that some of the country’s largest agencies have female ECDs.
New figures coming
He’s waiting for the new census to build an up-to-date picture.
“Aotearoa can rightly point to a brilliant contingent of female creatives in leadership roles – validated by the equal gender split in Axis Convenors in recent years and the balance of Axis judges this year,” he says in the meantime.
“What we do know is that as a whole our industry is significantly women-dominant, yet at last count, this is not reflected in all creative departments at the most senior level.
“The fix requires identification of the factors that might be preventing a sense of inclusion, to ensure that creative roles are visible and an attractive career option for women, that we reduce the barriers – visible or invisible – to staying in the industry, and to ensure that everyone, regardless of gender or background, feels an equal sense of belonging within the industry.
“That’s what we aim to discover with the Census Survey, and then support our members in putting in place the right conditions for everyone, in every department, to thrive.”
Community, not competition
How does that happen? It can begin with a simple shift in mindset, say Cibilich, Langley and McLaurin.
Each has felt like the “token woman” in the department at some point in their career. “And the really challenging issue with tokenism, is when another woman comes, she’s in competition with you to be the single token,” says Langley.
The antidote, she says, is to “form friendships and connections across the industry and put each other forward. That way we make sure that it’s never tokenism, that it’s community and it’s building diversity and adding to that picture. It means we don’t ever accidentally undermine each other by feeling like we’ve got to compete.”
An old girl’s network, if you will? Why not, say those sat round the table.
“I think we can counter it with the old girl’s club. And what I mean by that is putting each other forward, supporting each other. We have to over index on supporting each other in leadership positions,” adds Langley.
For the record, notes McLaurin, bigging up your kickass female colleagues isn’t tokenism.
“We’re really good at our jobs. Every single person in this room has won serious awards in their career – and not just one or two, loads of them. And so we’ve earned our stripes.
“We are delivering the benefits of our really long and well-recognised careers, and we can deliver that to people – with a different lens that they might not be able to access in other places. So it’s not tokenism any more, if it ever was.
“We are really good at what we do, and we love giving value and delivering value. And we’ve got the track record to show that’s what we’ve each done consistently for over 20 years.”
Invitations make the difference
While a supportive personal network can open doors, there are many day-to-day hurdles on the career path to the top jobs as a creative.
For example, says Langley: “Is she being invited to the big important meetings? Is she being given the big sexy, juicy brief for the biggest client… Or is she considered the one who will do all the work that the rock stars don’t want to touch? Is she being put forward on juries? Is she being championed by that agency on a day-to-day level?”
One criticism often aimed at women is that they don’t put themselves forward, but there’s one easy way for agencies to improve representation: ask.
“All change and all expansion of diversity needs invitations to be given rather than saying, ‘Oh, but nobody put their hand up.’
“The person you want might feel they can’t put their hand up,” says Langley.
Step two is to value diverse points of view.
“It’s not just having a seat at the table but having a voice as well. A trusted voice and a respected voice,” says Cibilich.
A human-first approach
While corporations tend to have human resources departments and DEI policies, advertising
agencies run lean and there’s often no budget for HR, notes Langley.
It’s an area where the industry needs to catch up, says Cibilich. And she’s talking about more than allowing parents to change their hours around or allowing part-time work after maternity leave. Creatives might never actually “switch off”, but she points out that company culture has to allow for life outside work.
“It’s about being flexible and recognising the individual. Great to have policies, but is that policy working for that individual person – what’s going to be best for them? And then also in turn them speaking up and saying, ‘Can I work these hours? This is what works for me. I can still do this role and be awesome, but this is how it’s got to happen.’”
“It’s really interesting the question of hours, isn’t it?” asks McLaurin. “Every creative knows, you literally do not have an off switch.
“You are thinking of ideas when you’re going to sleep at night. You are thinking of them in the shower in the morning. That’s the best place. You’re thinking about them when you’re driving. You are actually eating, sleeping and breathing your job because creative people are very passionate. So the idea of being worried about somebody’s working hours when they’re a creative person, it almost shows a lack of understanding of creative people.”
Reflect and lead
A perpetual question in advertising is whether the industry reflects culture or leads it. The short answer is, of course, a bit of both.
“I know this advertising, you could say we’re just selling shit. But actually we are not just reflecting society. Sometimes we’re leading it in the sense that what we create is going out into the mass media,” says Langley.
She recalls a campaign earlier in her career where female sports heroes were to be shown as wives and mothers, holding down part-time jobs.
“It wasn’t my project, but I could not let it go. And I just said, ‘Please don’t put this idea forward. Here’s why: the problem women face in sport is they’re considered part-timers or ‘good for a woman, considering she has to be a mum too’.
“I was like, ‘Would you ask a male athlete how he’s balancing being a new dad with whacking the ball out of the park? No, you wouldn’t. So let’s not show women that way.’ To their credit, the men working on the campaign were incredibly open to that feedback.”
Selling a dream is, after all, a large part of advertising.
“It’s really important that young girls who saw the final ads were thinking, ‘Yes, I want to be a kickass sports hero like that.’ Not, ‘Oh, I could maybe do part-time sport and be a mum.’
“So diversity at the top levels in creative departments is very, very important not just for our industry but actually for all of our society.”
‘The grass is green over here’
If all else fails, take a leaf out of these founders’ books and strike out on your own, says Langley.
“I encourage women to do what we’ve done to say, ‘Hey, we’ve tasted this other side and it’s amazing over here.’
“If you’re not feeling supported or feeling that the opportunities aren’t there for you at an agency, start your own. The grass is green over here. It’s great. It’s empowering and it’s joyful.”
“I love it. Absolutely love it,” adds McLaurin.
And, most importantly, says Cibilich: “Clients love it too.”
This story was published in NZ Marketing magazine issue 82, March-April 2025. Why not subscribe? Get four issues a year delivered for just $50 if you autorenew. Essential marketing intelligence. Don’t miss it.
