I never miss a Hollywood awards show. It’s a great excuse to watch TV at 5pm and start drinking champagne at 4pm because I have a cheese board to prepare that has to sustain me through a ceremony they always try to make shorter, and never do. I also get to comment on everyone’s clothes in my sweatpants, which obviously makes me highly qualified, and the more the ceremony drags on and the champagne drains down, the more qualified I become. I also get to plan what I’ll wear one day when I’m nominated for best original screenplay. (BTW at this rate I’m probably going to wear something with a sleeve so when I wave my Golden Globe the skin on my arms doesn’t wave back.) Of course I also love the rousing speeches that get me dewy-eyed and clear any backlogged emotions that won’t be useful at work on Monday.
This Sunday night at the Golden Globes, the Queen gave a such a speech. Not Claire Foy, not Judi Dench, not Helen Mirren. Queen Oprah. She gave the most rousing of all speeches, clearing a lifetime of Monday emotions. If you’re reading this from Earth you’ll certainly have seen the final moments, I’d paraphrase for you but one don’t paraphrase the Queen, so here it is:
“So I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say “Me too” again.”
While we gave her a standing sweatpants ovation in my home, hoping the sound of our clapping would make it to the Beverly Hilton, I suddenly felt compelled to write about the magnificent women who fought hard as leaders as I grew up in advertising. Women who, in a comparatively small agency in Johannesburg, South Africa, created a kind of Wonder Woman-esque island for me to learn in, and where any lack of power never even occurred to me, because they were in power. I was the shorter, less cool-accented, actually nothing physically similar to Gal Gardot of advertising, and they made me think I am the man who can. (Yes that’s a line from Wonder Woman).
They were a trifecta whose words and actions still influence decisions I make today. Stefania Ianigro Johnson. Sandy de Witt. And Guia Iacomin. These three women were stacking up Cannes Lions before there was a Glass Lion, before they even thought to balance the juries with women, when the offers to go home with male creative directors were no doubt laid out on platters with as much normality as the cheap beachside buffets. Let me tell you a little about them. And I should caveat this all with – this is my perception of them. I have no doubt they faced mountains of challenges and fought battles I’m not aware of, but my point, Oprah’s point, is they were magnificent women who set an example.
Stefania was a writer. Meticulous. Demanding. Her red pen going over your script was brutal. Each red mark on paper a kind of symbolic paper cut for shoddy grammar, spelling mistakes, conceptual flaws which of course should not have been there. In a room full of half-baked concepts from young people who had barely slept, she could pull a campaign thread through ideas like a master tailor turning scraps of fabric into an expensive suit. And speaking of expensive suits, while I scraped together a wardrobe on a starting salary, to me she was the epitome of glamor, not afraid to be a woman. She wore clothes that emphasized her shape, she had a mirror on the back of her door where she reapplied red lipstick before presentations while she and Sandy rehearsed what they would say. Everything with them was thought through. Everything was dialed.
Guia was head of production. A female head of production was not even close to common at the time, but it was all I knew. Guia always spoke in the same soft measured voice that could tell you to take an umbrella and stick it up your arse while making it sound like a compliment. Not that Guia ever said things like that. Her instructions were simple and unwavering. And kept everyone calm at all times. Think about a lullaby where the words are, “No we don’t care for that, so let’s get it together and do it the way we are supposed to, alright?”. That’s what Guia sounded like. And she did this all in beautiful shoes and perfectly fitted clothing that made me understand that feminism and taking care of how I present myself need not be at odds.
Sandy was plain fierce. Actually she was many kinds of fierce. Fierce about what the idea was. Fierce about art direction and craft. Give her a doctor’s note and she’d probably comment on the kerning of the letterhead, nothing slipped by her. She was fierce with any director or photographer who thought they knew more about how her idea would be made. She knew how to do it herself, and she was never intimidated by them. She storyboarded before they did. She looked into their cameras. She armed herself with a wealth of knowledge that made her more powerful. She made decisions and was unapologetic about what she liked. She threw noisy stereos and phones out of windows when she’d explicitly requested quiet. She didn’t care what you thought, she was working. If something was created on her watch, it was crafted, and perfect. Everything I learned from Sandy allowed me to pack my bags and head overseas, to go and work for another magnificent woman, the amazing Susan Hoffman.
It honestly never occurred to me at the time just how powerful these women were in my life. Yes, I noticed that in our big TBWA network they were a speck of femininity in a sea of macho. But the sheer fact that they were there in positions of power made it seem normal, and that nothing was impossible for me. Probably an even greater achievement was they made just a few us, a lot more of us. They turned the tide on “we need a woman in the room” to women who were in the room already because they were the best people for the job. When I look at how many women who came under their influence fill the departments of businesses across the world now, it’s amazing.
Just as Oprah mentioned, this also takes some pretty phenomenal men – John Hunt who founded the agency, and smart motley crew I worked with – all allowed this good to happen. I didn’t know it at the time, but in spite of the role models the world was churning out, they all chose to behave differently.
In Oprah style I’m handing virtual champagne to as many of the magnificent women who came under their influence as I can remember. Maybe some of you will repost this as a thank you to them for dragging us kicking and screaming until our work was on point, passed those who even thought of harassing us, of abusing their power, or messing with our power in any way at all. Here’s to Stef, Guia, Sandy and you and you and you Kirsten Hohls, Robyn Bergmann, Cindy Lee, Camilla Heberstein, Minky Stapleton, Leigh Bullock, Paige Nick, Clare McNally, Avi Pinchevsky, Fran Luckin, Jenny Glover, Bibi Lotter, Marianna O’Kelley, Cathy Ireland, Sue Stewart, Helena Woodfine, Jo Barber, Jacqui Teasdale, Roanna Williams, Candy Waddell, Karin Barry, Juliette Honey, Kerry Friend, Diana Prince, Nicole Binikos, Nicola Bower, Janine Wittrowski, Jenny Groenewald, Lisa Wides, Margie Backhouse, Petra, Zoe, Colleen Anderson, Tessa Thompson, Lisa Vermaak, Joyce, Kim Hunt, Carol Soames, Sally Walland, Lorraine Smit, Debbie Dannheiser, Caz Friedman, Hazel Neuhaus, Melanie, Nicola Berry, Beth Erasmus, Lynn Joffe, Wendy Moorcroft…the list goes on, names have no doubt been left off and misspelled…add and change in the comments!
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