How Aussie Agencies Are Celebrating International Women’s Day 2020

It’s International Women’s Day this Sunday 8 March. In honour of the day, B&T wanted to do a wrap on how Australian agencies are celebrating the important day.

IWD 2020 sees a number of missions to help forge a gender equal world.

Celebrating women’s achievements and increasing visibility, while calling out inequality, is key. Here’s what some of Australia’s media and creatives are doing.

OMD

Across OMD Australia, there a number of initiatives to celebrate International Women’s Day #EachforEqual.

Sydney:

OMD is hosting an International Women’s Day morning tea. The agency will have Yumi Stynes, TV and radio presenter, author, podcaster and all round inspiring human being. Yumi will share with what #EachforEqual means to her. This will be hosted by Laura Nice, Managing Director.

This event will be happening in Sydney on Monday 11^th March.

Melbourne:

At OMD Melbourne, an equality wall is being created and everyone will be invited to write their thoughts on a postcard on what equality and #EachforEqual means to them. It could be as simple as what they hope for the future, a campaign that championed equality that they loved, an area that’s experienced the most change, content that’s taught them something new about inequality or a role model that strives for change. This #EachforEqual wall will live in the office continually inspiring all OMDers.

This event will be happening in Melbourne on Tuesday 12^th March.

Brisbane:

OMD Brisbane will be hosting an International Women’s day breakfast panel discussion in OMD Brisbane joined by Debbie Stevens, Consultant at SRG and Kelly Healy, General Manager Agency Sales at News Corp.

Social initiatives 

OMD will also be amplifying IWD on its social channels by posting a gallery of photos of each markets initiatives, profiling different people across all markets, discussing IWD and what ‘Each for Equal’ means for them and ceating a video montage of all these videos as a wrap up.

PHD

PHD is expanding International Women’s Day from being a single day to being a week of activities. It has organised networking events and opportunities to have inspirational women talk to its staff and clients about their achievements and hurdles they’ve overcome in their career and life’s journey so far.

What it’s done this year:

• Organised a women’s networking afternoon for our Group Business Directors and most senior clients on a boat.
• Had a table of clients and staff at the IWD Business Chicks lunch to hear from three inspiring women.
• Hosting an ‘Inspo Session’ for all of our staff (male & female) with Beverly McGarvey, Chief Content Officer of Network 10 as our guest speaker.  Beverly will be taking everyone through her career & life highlights and hurdles, interspersed with tips and advice.

DDB Sydney

To celebrate International Women’s Day this week, DDB Sydney have asked its staff to share a small part of their story. The stories will be shared across LinkedIn.

WPP

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2020 and this year’s theme #EqualforEqual, WPP AUNZ are asking what IWD means to some of its staff and sharing it across its social channels. Here’s what GroupM CEO Mark Lollback said. 

GroupM

This year GroupM has evolved the Women of GroupM content campaign it ran in 2019, fully embracing the theme of Each for Equal. Every day in March GroupM is posting a profile from someone across its agencies MediaCom, Mindshare, Wavemaker, Essence, plus Finecast and Xaxis, to share what equality means to them, and who their equality hero is.

This year it’s not just asking the women across the organisation – because equality means everyone. It’s important that IWD is about action – not just words so GroupM is also asking its people to think about an equality action pledge. GroupM is also doing a similar thing to WPP and sharing what IWD means to some of its staff members and sharing their answers across social media.

HAVAS

To celebrate International Women’s Day, Havas held a panel with its three female CEOs (out of four) to really look behind the curtain at the challenges women face in our industry and in leadership.

The panel addressed questions posed by staff across the village including candidly discussing issues such as sexual harassment, the gender pay gap, parental leave and returning to work, and unconscious bias.

Havas then asked their staff how they would like to continue the conversation and plan to hold further discussions to open up the dialogue around gender inequality, and the range of related issues.

M&C Saatchi Sydney

True to one of their core values, this year M&C Saatchi has a bias towards ACTION.

Its focus this IWD is on Courageous Communication, which is something many women find challenging, but a conversation that could have a simple, yet significant, impact on their lives and future careers.

One activation of this idea will be a series of workshops run by leadership coach, Alicia Brown, the founder of Guide to Thrive.

The workshop will focus on three key areas:

– Biases that still exist for women and how to counteract them

– What does “fake it until you make it” actually mean

– The principles of Courageous Communication

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B&T Changing the Ratio brings the Australian industry together to overcome biases (gender, cultural, age, disability and more), and discuss how we can create a more effective and innovative communications industry by reminding and showing individuals they belong. BUY TICKETS HERE.

Feel free to email ally@bandt.com.au if we’ve missed your agency and you have some IWD news/initiatives to share!