Whilst we might like to occasionally hide our heads in the sand and pretend it's not the case, the sad fact remains that in advertising, as in most walks of life, the gender gap is still an issue. Hoping to turn the tides during this year's Cannes Lions festival is the rather cunningly-named Cannes Lionesses website, which celebrates and champions female creativity. The Lionesses are returning to Cannes this year, and this time, they are on a mission to seek out the first ever female creative to strike Cannes Gold!
Holly Fallows
Cannes Lionesses is encouraging people to help out with the search to identify this ground-breaking female creative, the original Peggy Olson (you're all Mad Men fans right?), and join the conversation around female creativity in the industry, using the #canneslionesses hashtag. As well as finding the first ever female Gold Lion winner, Cannes Lionesses is aiming to document every female creative to have ever won at Cannes. Then present an inspiring and definitive list of all the Cannes Lionesses throughout history from the festival’s launch in 1954 to 2016.
“Last year there were thousands of winners but only 267 were female creatives, so we want to shine a light on these women and inspire others to follow in their footsteps”
This year, as well as featuring video interviews with 2016’s crop of female Cannes winners, the site will host interviews with high profile winners from previous years and from across the globe. From the UK this includes Grey’s Vicki Maguire, Saatchi & Saatchi’s Kate Stanners and Rosie Arnold, (now of AMV BBDO) to name but a few. These celebrated female creatives will offer advice and tips to fellow females in the industry, revealing what inspires them, what winning at Cannes has meant to them and how it has impacted their careers. Interviews and other inspiring content will be hosted on the Cannes Lionesses website.
Charlotte Watmough
Cannes Lionesses was set up last year by award winning mcgarrybowen London creative duo of Holly Fallows and Charlotte Watmough, and is backed by the agency. Fallows said of the initiative: “Last year there were thousands of winners but only 267 were female creatives. We set up Cannes Lionesses to shine a light on these women and inspire others to follow in their footsteps. Hopefully they will think, If she can do it, so can I.” Cannes Lionesses will also run on Instagram and Twitter. The new Cannes Lionesses website will be live by this weekend and includes a short film explaining the initiative in more detail.
Cannes Lionesses
Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance writer and struggling musician from Kidderminster in the UK.
