Saatchi & Saatchi executive chairman Kevin Roberts is a man who might soon be wondering what happened to his job following an interview he gave last week.
Indeed, he’s already been asked to take a leave of absence by holding company Publicis Groupe, while the board further evaluates the situation, saying it has a “no-tolerance policy” towards commentary against the “spirit” of the employer.
So what kind of comments could the leader of a major advertising agency make to upset so many people?
Well in an interview with Business Insider in London, Roberts took on the small matter of gender diversity in advertising. “The fucking debate is all over,” he said. “This is a diverse world, we are in a world where we need, like we’ve never needed before, integration, collaboration, connection, and creativity … this will be reflected in the way the Groupe is.”
Well, apparently not, given the reaction to the comments by the Groupe’s board.
And apparently not, according to the numbers, with Business Insider noting all six major advertising agencies have male CEOs and that just 11.5% of creative directors in ad agencies are female, according to a study by The 3% Conference in 2014
So why is the gender debate “fucking” over? Well because Publicis has a 50/50 gender split between employees, according to Roberts. While Saatchi has had issues promoting women to senior-level roles, he doesn’t think a lack of female leaders is a problem.
You see women don’t have “vertical ambition”. We have “intrinsic, circular ambition to be happy”. That’s according to Roberts, who also said in the interview that diversity campaigner Cindy Gallop is simply “making up a lot of stuff” to build a profile.
And he couldn’t talk about sexual discrimination because Saatchi has never had that problem, according to Roberts. As Roberts said himself: “Thank goodness” for that!
Advertising actually does have a serious “fucking” gender diversity issue, all over the world.
Earlier this year in Australia, M&C Saatch celebrated its birthday in a Surry Hills bard in Sydney, by having a woman jump out of a giant cake and do a striptease.
Last year one of Publicis’ creative agency’s Leo Burnett published an image celebrating its seven new hires – all white men. At the time Gallop tweeted, “What the fuck are u thinking?”
To say Roberts should know better is an understatement. Especially as part of his mandate as “head coach” for Publicis is to manage career development of the agency’s 80,000 staff around the world.
Meanwhile, the story’s gone everywhere, and Roberts might now be wondering what happened to the days when he could simply express whatever he wanted on the small issue of gender diversity.
As Cindy Gallop tweeted:
I don’t care what @krconnect says about me. What’s noteworthy is that white guys can’t get away with this any more pic.twitter.com/gjazbnCKBs