How do we rise without compromise? The question wasn’t rhetorical. At Cairns Crocodiles 2025, presented by Pinterest, it became a rallying cry and a provocation.
Missed out on Cairns Crocodiles 2025? Get your super early bird tickets for 2026 now!
This session brought together four of the industry’s most influential voices, each with a bold, actionable idea to challenge the status quo. No more performative allyship. No more waiting for permission. No more soft landings.
Each leader pitched a single concept: one thing we can do to drive the sector forward without leaving people behind. The result? A session full of hard truths, fresh frameworks, and practical solutions that didn’t just seek inclusion, they demanded structural change.
Jasmin Bedir: Redefining Masculinity Means Ditching the Safe Spaces
Jasmin Bedir, CEO of Innocean and founder of Fck The Cupcakes, opened her talk with a pointed observation: there were very few men in the room. “It’s honestly not doing so well because I’m looking at the room, and it’s the usual people that are coming to this,” she said. “It’s the women who are talking about it, and it’s really hard to get men involved.”
After years of attempting to spark gender dialogue through cupcakes and cooking classes, Bedir has come to a stark conclusion: empowerment alone isn’t shifting the narrative. “When the cameras are off, the interest disappears,” she said. “Self-empowerment alone isn’t fixing this.”
Her solution? Reconstruction, not just of systems, but of male identity itself. Partnering with The 100% Project, Innocean conducted an 18-month study titled The Invisible Man, examining the portrayal of men in media. It revealed the persistence of five dominant archetypes that restrict gender equity, mental well-being, and the visibility of complex men.
- Men aspiring to be Honourable and Noble
- Men are Portrayed as Unemotional
- The Desire to See Normal Men
- Portraying Contemporary Families
- Men are Complex & Dynamic
The research highlighted a clear need to foster more positive, diverse representations of men and masculinity. “What we need to do as an industry is get together and talk about how we’re redefining masculinity in anything that we are creating,” Bedir urged.
Her call to action was clear: replace outdated stereotypes with contemporary, emotionally-aware representations of manhood.
Phoebe Sloane: Stop Waiting for the Disclosure. Be Ready for It.
Phoebe Sloane, co-founder of The Aunties, issued a blunt wake-up call: “There’s too much talk and not enough action.” With over 2,500 members and 500+ formal mentorships across Australia, The Aunties have built powerful networks, but Sloane says that’s not enough if we’re unprepared for what happens next.
“One in four women in advertising report being bullied, undermined or harassed,” she said. “Yet we’re not trained to know what to do when someone confides in us.”
That gap led Sloane to launch Support Talk, a first-of-its-kind online training program developed with Women’s Health Victoria. The video-based module teaches mentors, and anyone in a position of trust, how to safely and effectively respond to disclosures of bullying, violence, discrimination, and sexual harassment.
“We’ve created a safe space in the industry where some women feel more comfortable speaking up, now more than ever before. We noticed that we weren’t equipped to handle those conversations,” she said.
The training, which is free for its first three months, equips users with the tools to listen, validate, and refer disclosures appropriately. For Sloane, it’s about readiness, not reaction. This, as Sloane highlighted, is how you become part of the solution.
Michael Ray: Fatherhood Isn’t Optional. It’s Undervalued.
Michael Ray, a single dad and advocate for gender equity in parenting, shared a story that silenced the room: being barred from helping his daughter backstage at a dance recital because he was a man. In doing so, he highlighted the need for drastic change in the roles men take on in advertising, to help shape our perceptions of the roles of a father.
Ray’s message was that fatherhood isn’t a side plot. It’s a central role, yet advertising continues to sideline it. “We cast dads as extras and mums as default caregivers,” he said. “We’re teaching children that nurturing isn’t a male trait—and that has ripple effects for generations.”
“We’ve let an outdated narrative control us,” he said. “Advertising casts dads as extras and mums as default caregivers. That’s not bias—it’s sabotage.”
He called on brands to rewrite that story. Through workshops, corporate talks, and his book Who Knew?, Ray challenges the outdated parental paradigm. Data supports his mission: one in five single-parent households are headed by men, yet fathers are twice as likely to have flexible work requests denied.
His idea? Rewire advertising’s blueprint by placing fathers in the centre of caregiving stories. Not as quirky characters or tag-alongs, but as equal, emotional, everyday parents. Because the consequences go far beyond visibility. “We’re teaching children that nurturing isn’t a male trait, and that has ripple effects for generations.”
“We need to change the blueprint,” Ray said. “Not just for men, but to alleviate the mental load carried by women.”
Kate Westgate: Inclusion Isn’t Just Who’s In the Frame, It’s Who’s Behind the Camera
For Kate Westgate, head of marketing, Homecare, Unilever, inclusion isn’t a buzzword or a feel-good goal. It’s a proven business advantage. “Sixty per cent of Australians don’t feel represented in advertising,” she said. “And yet inclusive campaigns perform better.”
Westgate’s solution is the Three Ps framework—Presence, Perspective and Personality—which encourages brands to rethink not just what stories are being told, but who’s telling them. “Inclusion isn’t about just putting someone in the shot. It’s about who’s writing the script, directing the camera, and calling the edit.”
She spotlighted Rexona’s Not Done Yet campaign featuring Dylan Alcott and produced with Bus Stop Films as a blueprint for inclusive production, one that reflected disability representation both on and off-screen.
The campaign resonated across audiences, showing the business case and the cultural impact of doing inclusion properly.
The Real Challenge: Doing the Work After the Applause
The session didn’t end with a standing ovation. It ended with a challenge: Pick a lane, and do the work.
Whether it’s rebuilding masculine norms, preparing for disclosures, making caregiving visible or embedding inclusion from the inside out, these aren’t just good ideas, they’re roadmaps. The only question left was: who’s ready to follow through?
Because rising without compromise doesn’t mean waiting for permission, it means acting before it’s too late.
