Melanie Huggins, Ogilvy Paris: "Keep reminding the industry why gender equality is important."

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Levallois-Perret, France

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Melanie Huggins

Chief Strategy Officer — Ogilvy Paris

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Melanie Huggins, Chief Strategy Officer at Ogilvy Paris, is a proven results-focused leader with 25 years of experience working on iconic international brands, both client-side and within some of the best award- winning creative agencies. For International Women's Day, we had the opportunity to chat about her insights on the industry and gender equality.

In what ways can women in advertising pave the way for or support younger women hoping to break into advertising?

I’ve been in the industry for over 25 years so of course there’s been undeniable progress over this time, but there’s still a long way to go.

• Keep reminding the industry why gender equality is important. Beyond it being ethical, it’s a business imperative too. 80% of purchase decisions are still made by women but a lot of the work we produce for them isn’t meaningful. We need more women across all departments, to help create more effective work. 

• Get more women into the top roles, especially in creative departments. Women still only hold 29% of leadership roles. Whilst we make up roughly half of the advertising industry's workforce, only about 12.6 percent of Creative Director positions are held by women^[1]. We need to fix some tough objectives and make sure we achieve them.

• Close the gender pay gap. Research this week from l’Insée shows that in France, women are still earning 23.5% less than men. At Ogilvy Paris we are the #no2 agency when it comes to the gender pay equality index, but every agency needs to fix clear objectives and step up.

• Help address the ‘pregnancy penalty’ and ‘parental burnout’ because they are real. There is still so much to do here to make coming back from maternity leave and being a parent compatible with agency life. 

• Support women’s mental and physical health - Covid and now the cost-of-living crisis means that more than half of Mums in the UK and France are struggling with mental health^[2]. We also need to drive awareness of the impact of health issues like Menopause and Endometriosis and, as we are doing across all the WPP networks, put support into place.

• Increase understanding of gender bias - we are often seen as being less legitimate in our roles and, from our leadership style to how we dress, we are more criticized by those around us. These unseen barriers are still very real and create additional pressures on women who are striving to break the glass ceiling.

How can we close the gap created by ageism, especially among women, in the industry?

Ageism has repeatedly been found to be the leading form of discrimination in the workplace, and we need to be mindful that as an industry we have thrown out some of our most experienced talent because we tend to value everything that is new, shiny and youthful. 

Let’s be clear that including senior women (and men) in our agencies is good for brands. Both Boomers and Generation X outspend Millennials. Many brands actively target 40+ consumers and many client briefs ask us to recruit new younger users without alienating older ones. 

Studies show that we are not connecting with older people in a way that’s relevant to them, often falling into stereotypes. Having more senior women in agencies can help us to truly get under the skin of this audience and connect with them in a meaningful way.

We need to keep hold of and celebrate our more experienced women, and if we don’t have enough of them, we need to actively recruit them back into the system. We should never presume that they are ‘out of touch’ (many of them have very social-media savvy kids for starters), but if there do happen to be gaps in their knowledge, we should get them up to speed with the latest tech and trends, embraced so rapidly by their younger counterparts.

How does your experience as a woman in marketing inform your work? 

As planners, we have more data than ever before, but most of us also use our intuition and put ourselves into our briefs.

Even though I’m (proudly) from a working- class background, I’m a 51- year- old Caucasian woman and I’m very conscious that I’m not representative of every woman. I’m constantly asking, ‘If my team is the voice of the people, how can we ensure day by day that we reflect everyone, including those who are not us?’. 

In my department right now we are 80% female, but we are also French, English, Mexican, LGBTQ, Black, White, Gen Z, 50+, Mums and happily childless …and it won’t stop there. Creating a team that represents French society, but that is also multi-cultural and embraces people from the rest of the world too is, I believe, the only way to make great work.

Gen Z is a generation of digital pioneers and has shifted the framework of many industries. How have this new generation of young women impacted the advertising industry and where do you anticipate they will improve the workplace going forward? 

Thanks to #metoo, younger women are no longer willing to put up with toxic behaviour or business practice that impedes their progression, and they’re using their voice in social media to raise their concerns and create movement.

For example, in France #balancetonagency has given people a voice and a means to expose toxic agencies and people.

However, we need to make sure that we maintain a dialogue and that we don’t demonize all men or make them feel terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing. Survey data from across the developing world had found that “a new global gender divide” is emerging. The analysis showed that the developed world’s young women have rapidly become more liberal. Young men, however, have either become more conservative (US) or been much slower to become more progressive (UK). Gen Z, the study concluded, is “two generations, not one.” 

We need Gen Z to break down this gender divide. This can no longer be a female-only fight – most men want to help; they are still in most of the top positions and a strong allyship with them is the only way to get support and solve the issues we still face. 

To read more thought leadership by Ogilvy Paris on this movement, please see New Era for Gender Equality in Agencies.