Rage kept Zoe Scaman in adland. Now she wants young talent to transform it for themselves

While positive strides have been made since – she points to external bodies like Nabs, “which has a fantastic platform for people to use,” Scaman says the level of secrecy around protecting abusers poses a significant barrier to justice.

“We still have a massive issue with NDAs, and where junior talent is involved, we have huge power dynamic issues – so they don’t feel like they can reach out to services, or they may not even be aware they exist. We have a culture of silence, and we need to figure out what we’re going to do about it.”

• A Muslim woman’s experience of sexual harassment in adland

Last year, a coalition of advertising industry groups, including TimeTo, Nabs, Outvertising, Bloom, the Conscious Advertising Network, Creative Equals and Wacl, as well as agencies that included QuietStorm, The7stars, The Elephant Room, Media Bounty and The Barber Shop, joined forces to demand agencies and leaders across the industry to adopt fairer NDA policies and raise awareness of the systematic misuse of NDAs in adland in relation to sexual harassment cases. However, wider adoption across the industry has been slow.

As such, Scaman says that people still fear the repercussions of speaking out about abuse and harassment in adland, “and if you’re trying to raise awareness in an agency, the likelihood is you’ll be removed from the sexy account, you won’t be put forward for pitches, you’ll be passed over for promotion, or you might just be kicked out the agency full stop.”

She believes the burden of pushing for change also too often falls on the affected communities. “We saw it with Black Lives Matter. Young Black women were coming to me and telling me they’d been put on their agency’s diversity committee, adding to their responsibilities and emotional labor without paying them any more.

“Agencies were forcing people into these roles that didn’t necessarily want to be there, or who didn’t have the time or energy to focus on it.”

This lies at the crux of many agencies’ issues with retaining diverse talent. “They are alienated and pushed to one side, or they are treated very differently. If you’re someone with ambition coming from a BAME, you’re painted as being too aggressive, too forthright. It’s the same for women. Agencies have a big problem with integration, and it’s not encouraging people to stay.”

Anger is a motivator

So, what made Scaman decide to stay in the industry at all? “Rage,” she says. “The anger drove me for a long time; it was a good motivator.”

Eventually, it burned her out. Through working with a therapist, Scaman says she realized she had donned armor every day to show up to work. “I was aggressive; I’d go into a room full of men and shout them down. I became 'a bitch' – which is just the role you have to adopt but it cut me off from myself.”

Leaving the agency world (and London) behind has helped her rediscover her softer side, she says. She also became a mother for the first time – something that is not conducive to agency life. She recalls her experience at a former employer, where just one mother was in the agency. “After she returned from maternity leave, I think she lasted maybe five months. They put her on all the worst accounts because she had to leave at 5.30pm.”

As the founder of Bodacious, Scaman is now her own boss. “I’ve got a network of people I pull in when the brief demands, but I wanted to work on my terms, within structures that work for me.”

The flexibility helps to prioritize balance and a healthy attitude, she says. “I sleep better, I eat better, I make sure I’m spending time out in nature and with the people that matter to me, and I just couldn’t do that in agency land. I was always on the pitch team, and there was a culture of boasting about how ambitious you are because you were willing to flog yourself and put your health on the line and that was success.

“I think we need to invert that. We’re a talent business based on creativity, how can you be creative if you’re cognitively impaired? I don’t think we’ve recognized that yet.”

Scaman says it should be a priority for agencies to address this to attract and retain the next generation of talent. “You’re taking on hugely creative individuals, and you’re trying to wedge them into all these molds they don’t fit. We’re facing an increasing workforce who don’t want full-time jobs in agencies; they want to be gig workers, a part-time TikToker, and a creative director on the side. They want to work remote, work hybrid, all of that.

“There’s a cognitive dissonance between what creativity is and how we cultivate it.”

But, as she discovered in her bid to expose adland’s sexual harassment problem: “Agencies have proven themselves immovable. The only way they will change is when it starts to hit their bottom line. It’ll come from clients, from smaller groups of talent stealing their business or finding smarter ways to turn around projects better and faster.”

So to young people themselves she says don’t get pushed down “a pure strategy route.”

“We need rigorous training but that can come from the world around you. Play around with Unreal Engine, play around on Fortnite, build a game on Roblox. Spend time in TikTok’s editing suite, even if nobody sees it. Be insatiably curious about everything.”

The Drum interviewed Zoe Scaman, founder of Bodacious, in September at the Paradigms conference in Lisbon.