Peluso (pictured at top) is a believer in challenging the advertising business to step up diversity and female representation, explaining that encouraging diversity, especially in the CMO ranks, will lead to more vitality in the industry moving forward. But there are challenges that need to be addressed. "There seems to be very high and terrific representation (of women) in their early career but there's a clear drop off in representation as you get to mid-career and operational levels and there needs to be something done about this to increase representation," she declared.
Scott McDonald, CEO of ARF, finds "the work/life profile of the entire population is far more heterogeneous than in the past," but noted that "marketers and advertisers need diverse perspectives to come to terms with these invigorating complexities and to create innovative ways of communicating with their markets."
I recently sat down with Peluso and McDonald (pictured below) to discuss these concerns and others.
Charlene Weisler: What is impact of the dearth of women in C-Suite management?
Michelle Peluso: Plain and simple, it's a huge missed opportunity in terms of what we know and studies tell us to be true -- the tremendous benefit that diversity brings to problem solving, innovation and understanding consumer behavior. So if there's an absence of female representation in the C-Suite, that's doing a disservice to the company and to society.
Weisler: Scott, why, more than ever, is innovative thinking from a range of different people required in the ad industry?
Scott McDonald: The population is getting more diverse across all dimensions. Longer life expectancy means that we have more generations alive at one time than ever before and research indicates that generations vary more on many behaviors and attitudes than in the past. A "minority majority">