TO ALL WOMEN:
Make it.
Make Creative Director.
Make the best 60-second spot.
Make the next Agency of the Year have your last name.
And then maybe, just maybe, next time Creativity Magazine does an article entitled "The Most Influential Creative People of the Last Two Decades," the picture won't look like this :
And maybe the list won't be comprised of 50 men.
Or was this poor journalism? What women really deserve to be on this list?
I bet no one knew it was a female creative director at Chiat who made Think Different happen. Lee is a true visionary and I won't deny that, but Susan Alinsanga is the female brains behind Apple.
Posted by: tamashi_no_tori | March 22, 2006 at 02:48 PM
*I* should have been on that list!!!
;-)
Posted by: Naomi Cook | March 22, 2006 at 08:22 PM
I agree there definitely should have been some female representation on the list especially considering some of these guys have only been rocking it for less than a decade. Personally, Janet Champ, Charlotte Moore, or Kara Goodrich would been better choices than a couple of the younger guys on the list.
As for who should you blame? Blame the editor, Teressa Iezzi. Kinda makes me wonder if it was as chauvanistic a list as you are attempting to make ir seem like.
Posted by: gold1show | March 23, 2006 at 09:53 PM
In defense of the post, we're not trying to make the list "seem" like anything.
It is what it is.
All men.
Why this is so, we are curious.
This isn't about bashing any gender or any person in particular.
It's about asking why and motivating the industry to do something about it.
Posted by: Jenn Totten | March 23, 2006 at 11:24 PM
If that was your intent, that's cool.
But to end an entry with, "Or was this poor journalism?" tends to add an definite opinion as to what was thought of the piece.
Additionally, in computer language, bolding or all caps is used to denote a person screaming. So when, "What women really deserve to be on this list?" is bolded seems to come off as a challenge. That's all. It's a completely semantically based disagreement.
To clarify, it's not an industry recognition. It's recognition from one periodical. If you really want to know why, then call Creativity and challenge them on their criteria.
Posted by: gold1show | March 24, 2006 at 01:46 AM
The bolding of "What women really deserve to be on this list?" was meant as a challenge. When I first read the article, I was appalled by the fact that no women were included. After getting over that shock, I realized that it took me quite a while to come up with women that deserved to be included. A few hours later, I came up with Paula Scher, Maureen Shirreff, Diane Rothschild, and Jane Hope. And commented on Adcritic.com in regards to these women being missing - questioning Teressa on how they decided who did and did not make it. I have not seen a response from them yet.
As to the article being "chauvinistic," I never said or meant to imply that. The post was done as a challenge to women - to do better, to make the list next time, to prove that the Boy's Club is on it's way out. And ended with the question of whether or not the article was a good representation of who the industry considers the top 50 creatives of the last 20 years. Simply a question to start a discussion.
Posted by: Claire Whigham | March 24, 2006 at 02:04 PM
This certainly isn't something only we are addressing. An author at The Huffington Post, a political leftwing group blog, recently voiced her questions about the Creativity article and the larger issue at hand: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lu-chekowsky/where-are-the-influential_b_18278.html
Read the comments though. There are definitely some people out there who aren't so sensitive to the issue... as one blogger asks, "Of what momentous consequence is your issue..the vacuous wasteland that is advertising doesn't have enough female hacks?"
Posted by: Jenn Totten | April 05, 2006 at 12:37 AM