The main message from this year’s Advertising Age “Women to Watch” honorees? Step your game up.
The event, held Wednesday at the Marriott Marquis in New York, toasted 25 honorees which included executives from the ranks of the media, agency and marketing professions. They all voiced the importance of risk-taking and of breaking away from the status quo.
“Women need to step up when it comes to taking risks,” Tara Comonte, COO and CFO at Mediabrands, said during the luncheon. “Female intuition is so valuable. We should be better risk-takers.”
“When you’re trying to reinvent a brand, it comes down to the ‘Never Been Done’ ideas,” said Maureen Sullivan, senior-VP brand and marketing partnerships at AOL.
Here are some other tips from the Women to Watch event:
- Take a step back. “Sometimes when you’re the dominant player in a category … it’s really hard to step back and say you’ve got to reinvent yourself,” said Sarah Robb O’Hagan, chief marketing officer at Gatorade. “A lot of companies have learned in the last decade that sometimes you keep riding a wave of consumer growth, and you’re not realizing that you’ve actually got to stay ahead of the consumer.”
- Abandon the masses. “When you design something for the early adopters, the rest follow,” said Christine Mau, brand design director at Kimberly-Clark.
- Make sure everyone is singing the same song. Amy Curtis-McIntyre, senior VP-marketing, Old Navy, said that “brand management has always been making sure the product and the marketing are on the same song sheet because if they’re not, neither is going to be as impactful as you want them to be.”
- Raising an agency is like raising a child. Karen Sauder, managing director, DraftFCB, Chicago, said changes in technology and consumer behavior can easily overwhelm an agency. “As you build an organization for today and the future, you have to be fluid, make sure you are giving your people the right tools, but there is no rule book, so you have to teach them how to make the choices, identify the opportunities and feel good about them,” she said.
