'Just don't paint it pink' - BBDO NY hosts panel to discuss role of women and leadership in communications industry
To celebrate International Women’s Day, BBDO NY hosted a panel this week including Linda Boff, executive director of global brand marketing for GE; Desiree Gruber, Emmy-award winning executive producer of Project Runway; and Meredith Scardino, Emmy-award winning writer for the Colbert Report.
Panelists
The three women discussed topics such as how advertising can move the global conversation around gender equality forward, what sacrifices and choices they’ve made during the span of their careers, and what barriers they’ve faced and how they overcame them.
Boff said when it comes to advertising, it’s not enough to just put a woman in an advertisement to “check that box.
"That’s not doing anybody any favors,” she added.
She said that finding an authentic way to talk about women that’s fresh and contemporary and appeals to all audiences is something that advertising and marketing can uniquely do. “Just don’t paint it pink. It’s got to be real,” she said.
Scardino added that seeing more types of women in advertisements would be nice. “Women in commercials, it’s always the ladies are either excited about yogurt or they are exhausted moms,” she joked.
When discussing the failures that inevitably come along during the span of one’s career, Gruber warned that women should try not to go down what she called the “failure maze,” explaining that women will often think “if only I had said this,” or “I should have said that,” rather than picking themselves up and moving on.
“You can’t go into the maze. Once you start thinking those negative thoughts, you have to think about three things that came out of it that you learned,” she advised.
The event also played the following spots to help get the conversation around gender equality get started: Always' "#LikeAGirl," Pantene’s "Labels Against Women," Under Armour’s “I Will What I Want,” starring Misty Copeland, and GE’s “What My Mom Does at GE.”