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Weekly Wrap

The Weekly Wrap

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

August 8, 2008 | 3 min read

Mike Lynch, commercial director at Nevis Design Consultants, takes in the week that was.

This week, it would be very easy to look at all of the bad news stories abounding on the demise of agencies, printers and paper manufacturers but that would be getting away from the biggest story of the week, possibly of the year, the historic opening of Beijing Olympic Games and the implications for the brands associated with them.

Commercial organisations sponsoring the Beijing Olympics are very concerned that what they hoped would be a positive experience for their brand could become a negative experience if there becomes too much focus on politics and ideology. But even as these corporations show their human rights concerns publicly, and privately encourage China to take correct action, financially, they’re locked in. So with two major games coming to these shores in 2012 and 2014 there are lessons to be learned about the risks of brand association. Caveat Emptor indeed.

And now for something completely different. According to a report by the London College of Communications, women make up just 8 per cent of directors sitting on the boards of a selection of London’s creative businesses.

It states that, despite the high proportion of women designers in the industry, there are only eight female directors on the boards of the biggest creative groups, compared with 102 male directors.

And what reasons does the report offer for the low number of women making it into the boardroom of design consultancies?

Apparently many of the top 20 groups serve the construction industry, or are technical in nature. And as almost half of all UK design businesses work in the male-dominated areas of communications, digital and multimedia design, then it goes without saying that the men need to be at the top. Right? Well before we condemn this point of view let’s look at our own backyard: Of The Drum’s recent Power 100 poll, a quarter are women and of those 16 are in senior positions within agencies servicing the creative community. So double the percentage of London. Does that tell us anything about the Scottish market? Answers on a postcard please.

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