Women don’t lack 'vertical ambition': Q&A with an advertising MD - Women's Agenda

Women don’t lack ‘vertical ambition’: Q&A with an advertising MD

Victoria Curro: A lot’s changed at a senior management level for women in advertising, but not so much at an executive suite level.

If you think women lack ‘ambition’ in advertising, take a look at Victoria Curro.

Having completed her first big advertising campaign during the Sydney 2000 Olympics, she was running major projects by age 23 and being given increasingly more high-pressure campaigns to work on.

Sixteen years and four Olympics later, she’s now leading LIDA, the customer engagement specialist business of M&C Saatchi Group.

In the below Q&A with Women’s Agenda, she shares how she got started in advertising, why she took a 50% salary cut to get her foot back in the industry after having a child, and what she thinks about international ad man Kevin Roberts’ take on women lacking ‘vertical ambition’.

Was your career in advertising planned or did it happen by chance, how did you get started?

It was most definitely by chance! At the end of high school I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, at all. My boyfriend at the time had enrolled in a marketing degree and I thought to myself, why not? So, I did too.

What have the first three months in the MD role been like for you, any highlights you’d like to acknowledge?

They’ve been like a rollercoaster, with certainly more highs than lows. The opportunity to build a great leadership team around me has been vitally important and rewarding. Likewise has being getting the team focussed on growing and driving our industry profile. I’ve created a flat structure that my team has embraced. They get super excited at the opportunity to take on more responsibility which is so great to see.

What was it like starting as an account manager back in the late 1990s. What do you think helped in putting you on the leadership track?

It was a lot slower paced! The internet as we know it was non existent. I remember the first big campaign I built was for the Sydney 2000 Olympics, where we created our first campaign website.  To buy tickets people had to go to the website, then print a form, fill it out, and send it back to us via post or fax. So yes, it was a lot different.  But still it was a very exciting industry – that gave young people like me, just starting out huge amounts of scope and opportunity.

I was very fortunate to secure a few big opportunities very early in my career, through circumstance and through putting myself forward. I was leading key pieces of business at just 23. The exposure from these campaigns and the responsibility I was assigned really lifted my profile and showed that I was capable of taking on big, high pressure clients.

What does an average day look like for you

57 meetings… Not really, but definitely lots of meetings! My days are extremely varied, it can include anything from mentoring team members, to brainstorming new innovative ideas, to relationship building both internally and with clients, to ensuring our foundations are right for our ideas to flourish.

What key priorities to you juggle outside of work? How do you start and end your day?

I’m a single mum. I have to manage my seven year old daughter who has a more vibrant social life than I do! I start the day with making lunches and nagging her into her school uniform. The end of the day is a lot more pleasant as I chat to her about her day, pick her favourite book for storytime, and once she’s tucked into bed, I pour myself a glass of wine and watch Netflix.   

As a strategist, what’s your strategy for starting with nothing and coming up with a bold new idea?

The first thing I do is tidy my desk. The act of doing something mundane tidies my mind and gives me clarity to concentrate on the task at hand. I then engulf myself in getting an understanding of the consumer. I spend hours trawling social media sites and the internet, I talk to people who are within the client’s target audience. I delve into their consumers mind and get an insight into their voice and their words.

Next, I find inspiration. What has been previously done in response to a similar brief? I explore it further, why would or wouldn’t we do that again? Ideas start flowing once you have a 360 understanding of the business and their consumer.

Following the Kevin Roberts comments there’s been a lot of talk about the fact leadership roles in the sector are still dominated by men. Do you believe we’re seeing much change? What needs to change to get more women up the leadership ladder?

At a senior management level, yes, there is change. At an executive suite level, no there isn’t. A major part of that reason is because women need to take time out of their career. Often they need to restart as a result. I had to restart after giving birth to my daughter, I had to take a salary cut of 50% for a role with flexibility to get my foot back in the industry. Only now have I reached the same salary I was on seven years ago.

There is resistance from some people in the industry around women having flexible working hours. Women have babies, we can’t change that. It shouldn’t be a privilege to work flexible hours, it should be a compulsory conversation that is had pre, during and post pregnancy.

Women have so much to offer, especially in our industry. After all, it is predominantly women who make or influence buying decisions.

And we have to ask, do you think women in advertising lack ‘vertical ambition’, as Kevin Roberts suggested? And do you believe the debate/worldwide media attention this story has received will ultimately help in spotlight the issues/assumptions women face across the sector?

Women have tonnes of ambition. There is no doubt about that.

Where women get anxious is when they fear that the juggle of home and work life will mean too many compromises on both sides and that ‘having it all’ might just make them completely miserable.  Because we have treated ‘flexibility’ as privilege and often put all the onus on the woman to make it work, that anxiety is completely understandable. What I say to women in my team is, “I know you might want to have a child, to have a family, when that time comes I’ll work with you to help you continue to achieve your career goals and help you manage the juggle.’

I think Kevin’s comments have started a discussion and it is comforting to see that men are the ones who are tearing his ideas down and referring to them as an archaic.

I hope in ten years time that this debate doesn’t have to happen. But for right now, it does. I hope that when my daughter is ready to enter the workforce, that gender disparity is seen as a historical issue much the same as the suffragette movement is viewed by this generation.

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