Creative Skirts

Top 10 Ads of the Year

AdWeek published their Top 10 Ads of the Year, and I'm happy to say that the number of female creatives on the list has grown. Last year there was only one (congrats, Susan Hoffman), and this year there are TWO (out of 35 total creatives).

Danielle Flagg, CD at Wieden+Kennedy Portland

• P&G "Best Job"

Susan Hoffman, ECD at Wieden+Kennedy Portland

•     P&G "Best Job"
•     Chrysler "It's Halftime in America"
•     Nike "Jogger"

The good news is, 3 of the 10 spots were stamped with a female creative name. Here they are:

 

 

 

Hopefully Danielle and Susan have given each other a high five. 

Street Art to Save Lives

Here's a great installation from street artist Ernest Zacharevic (hired by Happiness Brussels) for Toyota. Apparently in the US alone, 2 kids are killed and another 50 are injured each week in accidents involving reversing cars. 

It's hard to tell in the photos, but the objects are real, while the kids are painted, so a car can actually run into the installation if the driver doesn't see it. While that helps the concept, I'd be pretty pissed if I ran into a shopping cart that was part of an ad for Toyota.

Agency: Happiness Brussels
ECDs:
 Karen Corrigan & Cecilia Azcarate Isturiz (what! ladies!)
CD: Peter Ampe
Concept Provider (that's a title I've never seen before): Gregory Titeca
Artist:
 Ernest Zacharevic

Crazy Cat Ladies

I never thought I'd care about a cat, but this spot changed that (for 30 seconds at least). 

Pretty nice work Sarah Litwin-Schmid and Emily Drake of Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand.

 

All Hail Susan Hoffman

I was in the mood for something uplifting today, so I went in search of a woman to inspire us all.

The search didn't start particularly well—on Adweek's full credits list of the top 10 ads of last year, only one woman was credited in any sort of creative role. ONE. 

But the one was Susan Hoffman, and she's plenty enough inspiration for us all. Here's some of her work as partner, ECD, and 8th employee of W+K Portland:

 

 

  

The spot she did with Janet Champ that made me go into advertising:

 

And finally, a few wise words from the woman herself:

 

Cheers, Susan Hoffman. And thanks for the mid-week pick-me-up.

Speak Up!

Finding female speakers for conferences about advertising is not a very easy task. At all.

Late this summer, Nancy Hill of the 4As had a (publicly) terrible time of recruiting female speakers, despite the fact that she is a woman. The original list of speakers had just 3 women, compared to 16 men (and was called out by Cindy Gallop, among others), resulting in a letter than Hill wrote on the 4As website demanding that women "Speak Up":

"You would think that women would jump at the chance [to speak] just like men do. Is it because we feel the need to focus on our current jobs, our own companies? Our families? Is it because there are so few senior females that they get recruited so much more frequently than men?"

The plea must have worked, because the final list for the 4As had a slightly more respectable 7 women, to 19 men (even if Nancy Hill herself was one of the 7).

SO

Last week's 3% Conference boasting (count 'em) a whopping 41 female speakers, deserves a huge round of applause. The list included some pretty big names:

    Cindy Gallop, started BBH NY & was named 2003 Advertising Woman of the Year

    Margaret Johnson, ECD & Associate Partner at Goodby

    Colleen DeCourcy, CEO + founder of Socialistic, founder of Organic, ex-Chief Digital Officer at TBWA

    Susan Hoffman, Employee No. 8 and now ECD at Wieden

    and more.

And to anyone who is in desperate need of females in our industry to be on your next conference stage, this blogger graciously put together a list.