Backchannelmedia

Independent, The; London (UK)

By Claire Beale

firedland has sex on its brain. Not in the why-breasts-A sell- aftershave sense, which is a whole other column. But in the anatomy of adland.

Oh, there are plenty of women - 50/50, actually. But take the lift to the management suite and you'll notice that most of the designer jackets button to the right. The women dry up and testosterone rules.

At the last count, in the latest adland census, just 15 per cent of advertising's senior execs are women. OK, compared to FTSE 100 companies (where only 10 per cent of big dicks are women), that's not so bad. But for a relatively lean, young, creative industry such as advertising, it is an appalling distortion of the talent spread.

And if you brave the creative department, among the stubble, Ts and jeans, women are rarer than a black pencil. Partly, it's the whole entry system that's at fault: creative departments can be pretty brutal places when you're starting out, working for a pittance on a placement until you've earned your spurs.

Even in less harsh agency departments, there can be issues. An agency CEO told me a story the other day about a very senior client who had just called to request that the newly appointed, high- flying female account executive on his business be removed and replaced with someone with testicles. Apparently, he didn't feel he'd get the best client service from a woman. In old-fashioned male client terms, I suspect this roughly translates as "a woman is hardly likely to take me to Spearmint Rhino next time I come down to London for a strategy meeting, now, is she?" Which betrays a rather narrow definition of good client servicing and a rather one- dimensional view of what a modern woman might find acceptable when it comes to client jollies.

Anyway, you get the idea: in some parts of the business the culture reeks of testosterone. I don't want to get all PC here; it's just that women are making the adland headlines this week, and you notice how unusual that is.

One of the few big characters in media, and one of the very few women ever to run a media agency, has just quit. The formidable Christine Walker is the doyenne (a fully appropriate cliche) of the media world and news of her impending departure has drawn a rare outpouring of excessive admiration. "Walker quits amid mass adulation," said Marketing Week. Uncurl those toes. It's true.

The hard-drinking, hard-smoking, hard-driving Walker has become a (very rich) legend. There are plenty of reasons why, but undoubtedly a key one is making it as a woman in what was absolutely a man's world. Walker made her reputation at the coalface of media buying, and that's not a pretty place to be, not now and definitely not for a woman in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Media agencies spend much of their time negotiating with the people who sell advertising spots and space on TV and in the press. It's balls-on-the-table stuff, and in Walker's formative years the balls on both sides of the negotiating table usually belonged to men.

Not only was it an aggressive trading environment, but the whole culture was distinctly masculine: when media sellers wanted to be nice to media buyers, they'd take them away to play golf, or watch the footie or the motor racing, followed by a dodgy club or two. They still do.

The thing about Walker is that she plays this game - drinking, smoking, bravura-ing - with the best of them, but has always been shrewd enough to play it her way.

Of course, she's not good because she's a woman. She's good because she's smart, because she's a ferocious and shameless networker, dedicated to her clients' businesses and absolutely passionate about, and committed to (until the end of June, anyway), the industry. But the fact that she's a woman makes her, still, a curiosity in the world of media agency CEOs.

Walker leaves the business having made upwards of [pound]10m from it by selling a majority share in the agency to M&C Saatchi. As the tributes of the past week illustrate, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who does-n't think she's earned it.

But is she a role model for young women in advertising? I'd say that Walker is a role model for anyone wanting to get on in this business, and if at least half of the people she inspires are women, so much the better.

As Walker departs, though, another woman emerged to restore the imbalance. Philippa Brown was announced as the new group CEO for Omnicom's UK media assets. It's a meaty challenge, pulling agencies like OMD, MG OMD and PHD into a cohesive group. With billings of [pound]1.2bn, it's one of the biggest jobs in adland.

Brown comes from the world of magazine publishing, at IPC, though she started out in media agencies. Her appointment has surprised on several fronts: yep, she's a woman; she hasn't got a track record in the brutish media agency world; and, though she's a board director at IPC, this is a big step up.

What Brown does have, though, is great people skills, a shrewd business brain and a resolute can-do work ethic: she gets things done. As a foil to the Omnicom Media European chief, Colin Gottlieb, Brown will play well in London. And as a woman, she helps to restore a little balance among the male CEOs.

ON THURSDAY this week, the Women's Advertising Club of London will gather together its finest (Dianne Thompson, chief of Camelot, Martha Lane Fox, the Lastminute founder) to inspire and encourage the indus-try's best young females to reach their full potential. As the census stats suggest, the cause is keen.

Anyone familiar with WACL will know that it offers advertis- ing's successful women a support network every bit as tight as the old boys' one. Here, genuine friendships are formed that grow businesses and boost careers, so you can see why it's important on a professional as well as a personal level.

If you ask most adlanders, they'd probably say that single-sex clubs are a throwback that does the industry itself no favours. While the hugely prestigious 30 Club voted to allow women members a few years back, the fusty, paunchy Solus Club remains a resolutely male domain. And as long as the Solus Club exists and as long as that shameful 15 per cent senior female execs figure exists, the women-only WACL has a real role to play.

This being adland, the most important thing about the WACL Forum day will be the opportunity to do a bit of first-class networking. No doubt about it: advertising is still a people business. Despite the relentless in-ternationalisation of the industry, the cost- cutting urgencies and the group corporate pressures, people still matter. What WACL and all the other adland clubs offer is the chance to get to know the people that matter. And a still small, but growing number of the people that matter are now women.

(c) 2007 Independent, The; London (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.