The most surprising thing about day two at the Cairns Crocs was the amount of people who dusted themselves off after the Pinterest welcome party and showed up for the standing room only sessions from The Marketing Academy’s Sherilyn Shackwell and David Ohana from the United Nations Foundation.
Guest reporting by former journalist Rochelle Burbury, Principal, Third Avenue Consulting
And the bit where David’s 4-year-old daughter stole the show by emitting a loud yawn during her dad’s presentation. Talk about being brought back to earth. Gold.
Not that I got to experience any of this as I was judging the Cairns Hatchlings yesterday morning. As President of the PR Jury – which was news to me! – it really was a privilege for myself and the other judges to watch these young bloody over achievers present their ideas for the incredible NFP, Women on a Mission (WOAM).
These Hatchlings were briefed less than 24 hours before to develop a six-month PR campaign for WOAM across the Asia Pacific and beyond. What each of the three finalist teams presented was nothing short of extraordinary. Clever ideas, backed by solid strategy and execution. Even the Indian team – who were ostensibly behind the eight ball having to present via Zoom as their visas were denied by the Government (I mean, what the hell). Amazing. And so clever.
The Hatchlings is an inspired idea from the B&T team and was such a pleasure to judge. I got to chat to one of the teams later at the ESPN Happy Hour who were so grateful for the opportunity and thrilled to be amongst the throngs at Hemingway’s and the conference. Sadly, they missed the Pinterest welcome party as they were working hard on their pitches so hopefully they make up for lost time. Seeing Ministry of Sound took me straight back to the 90s and so many memories I no longer have (you and me both Mel Hopkins!)
My colleague and MD Julie Wright was given one job – to take notes and debrief me on Sherilyn and David’s sessions. I received only a small grab bag of snippets because she was ‘in the moment’. One job Jules.
But from what I could glean I want to be Sherilyn’s friend. I love her candour about Millennials, Gen Z and Gen X (guilty!) – and how this year there will be five generations in the workforce. That’s frightening. With 50% of management being Gen Xers – who really want to say “Just do you frigging job” and Gen Z’s retort “I deserve a promotion” (usually after less than a year), it really is going to be, in Sherilyn’s words, “a shit show”. But the clear takeaway was that we shouldn’t be doing things the way they have always been done, we need to do better. All of us. As far as I’m concerned we can apply that beyond leadership.
Maybe the younger generation should take a leaf from David Ohana’s book. He applied to get a job with the UN 28 times. And was knocked back 27 times. It was only on the 28th that he got his dream job. That’s the type of resilience and desire that I’d be looking for in a future leader.
The other stand out session for me was the storytellers – especially Sid Punts from the Prison Chronicles podcast, Katrina McGowan from multi award winning iKandy Films and Poppy Reid from Curious Media. I met Sid and Katrina the night before at the Pinterest party – and Sid told me the story from his prison officer days when he had to escort Granny Killer John Wayne Glover from hospital back to prison. This man had (putting it mildly) a visceral hatred for elderly women. So imagine the scene in the lift when four grannies push their way in and you’re in charge of keeping the Granny Killer from adding to his tally. As Sid said, you’ll have to listen to the podcast to see how that one went. And I will be.
It was a real show of the power of storytelling and brands should take note.
So on to the disappointing – which was the session about gender equality. A standout panel with Phoebe Sloane from The Aunties, Jasmin Bedir from Fck The Cupcakes, solo dad and author Michael Ray, and Unilever’s Kate Westgate. They all gave excellent and insightful presentations…to an audience of less than 50 people. It was Jas that called it out – you could count the number of men in the room on one hand.
There’s a lot of talking about how the industry addresses gender equity. And many leaders love to shout about what they’re doing, but looking around that room, it’s clear we have a long way to go in this industry to effect real change.
So if you didn’t make it to the session, Phoebe is circulating the deck. It has tangible actions everyone in this industry can make today so we can start doing better. And we bloody well should.
