 Good evening, everybody. How are you going? I am wearing a nice but it doesn't work. It doesn't sound like I need it, so I think we're okay. Welcome to She Says. My name's Lizzie, and this is the wonderful Lizzie. I'm going to hand over to her to explain what She Says is. Thank you, everyone, for coming down to She Says Singapore. She Says is actually a global organization that started out in New York and London. It's a non-profit that does events and mentorship for women in the industry, specifically advertising media, as well as technology and creative. And we're really excited to have our panel of judges here. Judges, sorry. I just came from an animation festival, so flustered. But we've got a really awesome panel of speakers today to talk about creative grit. Well, basically, Lizzie and myself, as well as Mira, have been running this for about four years now. Lizzie has been a big driving force of She Says. And of course, not forgetting our wonderful volunteers who are here today. Vicky's jumping about a hundred slides ahead. She's covered everything. She Says has been running for about four years in Singapore. We brought it here because we kind of felt that there was an opportunity to kind of basically get more women into tech, creative, digital. And that's sort of like marketing industry, let's just say. So it's been a really long journey. I think we began when there was like four people sat in a room with a leaky kind of projector and all sorts of things going on. It's really lovely to see everybody here tonight. There's lots of people in the room here tonight who are here to kind of help you on your journey. But also, everybody here has got a skill that they can show somebody else. So make sure you stay around at the end and kind of have a chat with everybody. Tonight, I'm very lucky to be on stage with Vicky. Vicky has been on this big journey with me of kind of building She Says. The other very cool thing that Vicky does is cartoons underground. Who, as I wrote, who doesn't love to bring underground cartoons to life? I'm going to let Vicky tell you more about it. So I've been running cartoons underground for about six years now. Cartoons underground is Southeast Asia's largest underground animation festival where we screen independent films from all over the world. Last week, actually on Saturday, we had our sixth edition. Welcome about a thousand people had 400 film submissions from 50 different countries and curated 13 really epic films. These cartoons are not for children, but they're not dodgy either. But, you know, it's a lot of fun. It's a community type of festival, non-profit. So if you like animation cartoons or anything creative, come and approach me afterwards. Also, I also work at Zaxis, which is under Group M. I'm a product specialist in a programmatic agency. And we've also got Lizzie. Lizzie, want to introduce yourself? My name's Lizzie Hamer. I'm a creative director. I've recently learned that I talk out the side of my mouth, which is like a really big learning for me. I guess you guys might have noticed for a while before. You know, getting there. As a regional creative, it's really fun to be able to work across the region. And I think that's the exciting bit of being able to see all the creativity that is here in Asia. We have an awesome team. So you've probably met a few of them as you came in tonight. Everybody volunteers. This is a voluntary thing that we do in our free time. And it's mainly because they help us put it on, but also you guys as a community make this feel really rich. And it's worth kind of doing time and time again. Every month we run a session. So, alternatively, we do an event like this where we have an awesome panel of experts who are going to chat to you. And then the other month is a social, where we get a little bit loose. Have you had a technical class? Yes. Or we talk very well. We network. Tonight, there's a few things happening. So we're obviously going to talk about creative grit. And the experts are going to be the people that sort of share their soul and their story with you. However, we've got a very special VIP with us tonight. So a little bit of an exclusive. We're going to invite Pip on to stage. And she's just going to talk a little bit around her background and introduce us into the world of creativity. We then have a couple of things. So, questions. If you ask the best question of the night, you get to have a mentoring lunch with your chosen expert on the panel. By the way, do you guys agree? They're named. The other one is if you do the top tweet. So make sure you've got your phone out. You are hashtagging away. We are looking at, she says SG. And the hashtag is creative grit. So, please join in. Let me welcome Pip on stage. Run with applause, people. Hello, she says Singapore. Thank you, Burn. I've come over from Australia. And thank you, Lizzie. I turn this to her up because I do have notes because I'm old. And I spend time in my refrigerator looking for the flower. So, that's the way it happens anyway. So, I started off in creative in the 1980s and in radio. And the way I got into it is I was asked to do some voiceover work for a regional radio station. I then worked in their sales department for a little while and then their creative director moved on to Sydney. And as all creatives know, that's the way it flows. And I was asked to be the creative director at 2BS which is a radio station in New South Wales. So, you know, you've dragged a 60-year-old woman out of grave tonight and a completely different generation in the world of advertising. So, anyway, so I spent several years in the 2BS market and then decided to put my toe in the water in Sydney. And like all creatives, you know, and certainly back then, they weren't advertised jobs. You just moved to where you wanted to be and hopefully you picked up some work, and then you got a freelance around and then found something. So, I packed up myself, my two dogs, and my son. Who's standing over there? My son's Tobias Wilson. So... Oh, you're such a dead man. So anyway, so I had my resumé, I had my reel, and it was a reel then. And off I went to Sydney. So, I got my hands around the market and got to work with some of the greatest personalities and in some of the biggest stations in the Sydney region for about six months. And then a gig came up at 2GB. And 2GB is a talk personality station in Sydney. It was then still is. Always rated really well. Of course, we didn't have the targeting skills that you have now, so we worked on a thing called demographics. And they were pretty unreliable and as would the targeting that you can see with stations like that now, we were trying to hit 60-year-old people and we probably had a lot of much younger people listening to you. But anyway, that's another story. So anyway, so I took this temporary copyrighting position for a month and at the end of the month, the creative director resigned his position. And I do mean his position. Because advertising and radio at that time was a complete boys' club. I was one of two female CDs in the market. The other one was out in a very small station down in the west of Sydney. So I was the only one really in Sydney. So I had a team of myself and two junior writers, both male and both really good writers. So tonight we've only got five minutes together, so there's no way I could tell you of the worst misogynistic things that happened at that time. But anyway, interestingly, it was easier to win over the personalities because the department had been run pretty ad hoc. There were no policies and procedures. And so I turned that around and introduced those and made sure that the sales team couldn't write their advertorials in the first person and run them down to the personality's office just before they went on air. And the personality's producer wasn't ringing screaming at me that they had this piece of copy that sounded like the personality was personally endorsing some retirement village or something. So anyway, so everything came through my office and we sorted all that out and that was really good. Trying to win over the heads of the station and the other departments was a little more difficult, but we eventually got there. So I wasn't there to change the world. I wasn't there to take on everyone's battles and I certainly wasn't there to combat my way through the whole day and every day. So I was there to prove that I was the best for the job, despite my gender, which was the fight that was at the time. I needed to make a department that smoothed the process from sales through to on-air. I needed to create a winning formula for all involved and it took plenty of creative grit. So what is creative grit? Simply it comes from within you, I think. It's backed by your training and ability and it hinges on your analysis of the client and the market and the brand and the product. I never expected myself or members of my team to have to write anything letting the client services people off the hook. It was up to them to brief me properly and to bring me the information. It was up to me to ask them more questions if they didn't bring enough, but they were accountable for their part of the creative. I've never found writing hard, never. I think spatially, I pick up things, I toss them around, I can turn them over, I can spin them, I can layer them, I can expand them, I can touch them, I can make it happy, I can make it sad and I can make it funny. I can breathe emotion into it and emotion is a powerful word in the human being. It drives us in just about every aspect including the one that's really important to just about every single one of you guys in the room and that's the emotion of the purchase decision. So sometimes with creative grit though you've got to leave your ego behind but other times you've got to pick it up and run with it. You have to have belief. You have to believe in your creativity, in your ability and the way that you layer your production. The grit of knowing that when it's delivered in the marketplace it's not just the white noise of every day. It's the attention getter. It's the deliverer of the message and that it works its ass off for the client. So in the late 80s and 90s we didn't have as many of the tools as you have today. We took out a shotgun and we fired it at a target demographic and we hoped that some of those pellets hit the bullseye. You know, we had radio, we had TV, we had magazines and if there was a crazy budget we had highway billboards. So now you guys are so lucky. You can walk straight up to your target market you can put it under their head and you can shoot them in the temple with the information. In those days, brutal but true, in those days if you'd come into my department and told me about the possibilities of social media, if you told me the possibilities of what's coming in the future, geo-targeting, hell I would have been killing myself laughing. So anyway, so I still write, I write creatively and I write for fun, for me. So in conclusion, once you've found your creative it just takes grit to do it daily. Back then, 30 years ago, I took my creative to Sydney. I found my creative grit. I honed, developed fought the battles and ensured that with my team we delivered the difference. I made sure that the white noise wasn't good enough because with a pinch of creative grit you can get out of bed every morning and you can put on a high-vis jacket of creativity and you can go out there and you can be the extraordinary. Thank you for having me. Well, the chairs are heavy. What an amazing woman. Can I have one more round of applause for Cat? There's a lot of opportunity to learn from a lot of people that stand on this stage and Pip has offered us just a small insight to all of the things that she's achieved. She has a very illustrious career. So at the end, please go and ask her all the questions that you're dying to and stand in line because I'll be the first. She'll be popping up the bar later. I hope so. Especially now. So grit is a really kind of like, what is it? I've been trying to define it because we don't want to talk about burnout and we don't want to see that negative side of the world. We actually want to look at what it is that you've got to have inside of you as a creative, as a woman in technology, as a person who continuously puts themselves out there. What is it that you need to have to just keep going? The amount of times you're going to get knocked back, the amount of times that you put your ideas forward and they don't make it to that finish line? I've kind of been looking around the sort of perseverance and passion for like long-term goals. Is it just an indominal spirit? Well, hopefully tonight we're going to have our four experts stand on stage and they're going to tell you. So, please, round of applause for our four experts. A bit of alcohol, so hopefully we've kind of greased the wheels slightly on it. Now one of the things that I would say to a lot of kind of junior creatives or people in tech is know how to picture yourself, who you are, what makes you different from everybody else. So that's the challenge I put to our experts. I'm not going to tell you how amazing they are. So, Jess, on your feet, please. Tell the room who you are. Oh, wow. Okay, hi. I don't know if we're going to see one. Oh, we are. Hi, everyone. Hi, I'm Jessica. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer of McCann World Group, Asia Pacific. I am third generation advertising. My mom was creative director of Y&R. My dad was MD of BBTO. So I grew up literally in this industry, which meant I was never going to go into it. I was 26. I really did think it was all going to be like madmen, and it hasn't been at all. But I love what we do. I've been in this industry 15 years. I've lived in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, and now back to Singapore. I think that what we do has an amazing impact on the world. I think if you look at most of the great changes that have happened in the last 50 years, they've been made by brands, very rarely by governments, very rarely by legislation. They've been made by the kind of brands and the kind of products that we work with every day, which I think is a super important and a super privileged place for us to be. In terms of what makes me different, I'm a crazy cat lady. I am a perpetual Donald Trump harasser. Wait till you see my... I did warn them that when you get told my Twitter handle, it is just me harassing Donald Trump. So just... Actually, don't follow me. I'm from the US. I mean, so that's who I am. I think in a nutshell, is that enough? Perfect. Jess, is it an incredible, phenomenal force? I'll leave it at that. What did she say? OK, Charlotte, you're up. Oh, crikey. That's something to follow, isn't it? OK. My name is Charlotte Burley. I am the co-founder and managing director of a live brand experience. We are a Singapore-based, boutique, experiential, and brand activation agency. We've been here for a couple of years. We work with brands like Underama, Netflix, Optimum Nutrition, Singtel, DBS, lots of different types of brands. And essentially, our niche, I guess, is really trying to connect experiences, connect brands with consumers through unique and genuinely interesting or useful experiences. My background is, obviously, I'm not from here. I've been in Singapore for three years, and prior to that, I was agency-side in London for 16. So I'm a hardcore agency, never been client-side, big up the agency life. And, yeah, super excited to be living and working here and meeting you awesome people. Hi, my name is Bani Trihan, and I come from Accenture. And I'm the rare species of women in sales. So there are very, very few of my kind that you would find. And I love to do deals. The larger, the better. And a good bonus that always helps. So I have been in Singapore for the last nine years. Overall, I've spent time in India, in London, and now in Singapore. It's a pleasure to be here and to be talking to all of you. There's a rotten tomatoes and stuff. So I mean, mum, thank you for doing that, and a really tough act to follow. My name's Tobias Wilson. I'm the CEO of APD Singapore. I'm also the chairman of IAB in Singapore. I've been in Singapore for 10 years next month. And to be honest, I mean, you know, I probably shouldn't be standing here. You know, it's a... It's a commercial. Um... Police! I shouldn't be standing here. You know, I come from Creative Director and by tech, so my father was in tech, and I guess that's kind of gotten to me, to where I am now. But I grew up predominantly in a country town called Bendigo. Thanks. Shaya. There are no out-of-home... There is no out-of-home in Bendigo. There is a radio station, which mum ran. There is a TV station, which mum also ran. And I think there's maybe one advertising agency now. So it wasn't a thing. I grew up on a property with 15,500 sheep. It was not like you. Not New Zealand. So I constantly kick myself with the people that I'm surrounded by and the opportunities that I have and the journey that I've been able to go on. And so, you know, I'm super excited to be here. I'm really into what the panel is going to say as well. So I'm going to sit down and shut the hell up. It's got to be my journey. I train you well, gal. We have a really dynamic panel tonight. It's very exciting from technology to agency. Don't be scared to bias, even though you're the token mail speaker for tonight. So I mean, just kicking it off. What is creative grit to you and why do you think that we need it? Who wants to go first? All right. I'll go. So I think in marketing and advertising and in our industry, I don't think creative grit is just coming up with good ideas. That's being creative. That's why we're all in this. That's why we're doing it. All of us have the capacity and the passion, probably, to be creative and to come up with creative ideas. The grit comes in when you actually have to try and push that over the line, whether that is with a client that just wants something that's safe and predictable and in budget or under budget or within, you know, they just want a bigger logo. They want something faster and quick and just get it done. This brief's been on my table for ages. Just, you know, give me something that's easy for me to get signed off. The grit comes in when you stand firm and you follow the strategy that your team and your agency has developed around the insights, the behaviors, the audience information, everything that you have gathered, all the research that you've done, all the experience that you have on what works, what doesn't work for different audiences in different environments, for different products and different objectives. If you stand firm and you follow what you believe to be the right solution for the client and encouraging them to believe in that as well, that is where the grit comes in. And I think the way to build that grit, why it's important, because otherwise the industry stands still. We all do the same thing day after day. And to be honest, a lot of brands are probably okay with that because they haven't done it. It doesn't matter if someone else has done the same idea, they haven't done it, so it's new for them. But actually, our industry is so diverse and has so much potential that if everyone does the same thing, it slows everything down. Everyone has to be pushing. It's our responsibility to drive the industry forward and to push that creative. And the only way you can do that is by harnessing the grit that comes from the passion and trusting the process that we all follow. Well, we... I'm going to have to really try and stop doing that because I'm tired of this. I love it. So from business owners that start straight into Account World Group 5, let's go big. What is creative grit? What is creative grit? Okay, so I'm going to look at it through a slightly different perspective, where I ignore the brief. Did you write it? Sometimes. Creatives, too. But seriously, one of the things I think about grit is obviously the tenacity and the passion, but a really important part of grit for me is being the grit and not being afraid to piss people off. So you know how nice to create a pearl? There's grit, right? And I think a really good thing that my dad told me when I decided I wasn't going to be a creative and I was going into client service and my dad said you have to be comfortable spending about 80% of your life pissing someone off, right? It's going to be a client. It's going to be the creatives. It's going to be finance. It's going to be... And you have to hold the center and be comfortable that what you're doing is right and that it's going to lead to the right outcome. And so sometimes you will... I have walked into reams. I have seen... Finance people have literally cried. When I have walked into reams, creatives have vomited. You know, like you have to be comfortable sometimes to hold your own center, right? And also with clients. You know, I'm a firm believer that they pay us to do what we do because we're better at it than them, right? And if we're not, I don't understand what we're doing here, right? It started small, but you can go global. I have just... But it's really important because I think we run the risk in our industry sometimes of becoming suppliers, right? We are commoditized. What our product has been, you know, largely valued in a lot of our clients. They see us as people who just make a thing, right? We don't make things. We build brands. We make work that changes behavior. We make work that creates conversation, right? That's your North Star. That's who you should be. And to get that kind of thing done, someone somewhere is not going to like it. It can be the creatives where you say the first round work is fine, but it's not great. You know, it's the planner where you say, dig a little deeper for that insight. I don't like that brief, right? It's the client, one of our best pieces of work that World Group's done in the last three or four years was a piece of work for Lockheed Martin out of a New York office called Field Trip to Mars. Won a shit ton of wards. Oh, I said shit. Sorry, Sam. Sorry. My comms director seemed right in front just to watch me. But seriously. But I didn't say it. But one of the coolest bits about that, apart from it's a really nice piece of work, they went in 27 times to sell that idea. And the client said the 26th time, you come back in with this, I will fucking fire you. You come back in here with this, I'm done. And they went back in and they sold it, right? And so sometimes that is what grit is, is actually going, this idea is good enough for me to actually risk something for it. So that being my idea of what grit is. You can't. You're dead if you do. So for me, grit is basically finding out of the box solutions for persistent problems. And they can be anything. For example, Lizzie setting up, she says, it was leaky roofs at one time in four years, she's brought it to this level. As well as she's changed the way all of us interact, so much energy together. It's an example of grit. And in the same thing, she's established a brand for herself. So it's a different way of finding solutions. So that's grit for me. I really struggle with this, you know. It's, especially with creative grit, I think I'm telling you the same around being creative and then holding on to being tenacious or whatever you want to call it. I think grit, you know, to go back to mom's point around find your creative, I think is find what most stimulates you as a creative. Find whether it's writing or painting or singing or whatever. It doesn't have to, you know, it could be creating banner ads, I hope it's not. But um, because we can, we can't just have to automate the shit out of that. So we need to do a lot of shit out of that. We need to do a lot of shit out of that. I think it's find whatever most stimulates you. Find your creative and all-star and then run as fucking hard as you can at that. Give it absolutely everything you have with every ounce of your being and be authentic about it because when it is your north star you can't be anything but authentic. And I think that for me has been in some of the darkest hours, that 26th, you know, and going into the 27th or maybe the 260th. But um, you know, in your darkest hour that north star, that bright light will absolutely push you through. And if you've been bullshitting and if you're fake, you're fucked. You're all over because people will see through it and people don't want to buy something off you that you're trying to sell to them. They want to buy something off you that is meant for them. You know, it's their destiny, right? And as you saw the Lockheed stuff, when it is the destiny of the client when the creative is absolutely nailed, all of the angles are nailed to the inside and nailed the execution. There is no questioning. So, you know, for me, creative and creative is find whatever is your creative. Focus on it and keep your eyes on that north star because everything else will deflect off you if you're on the right path. And if you're not on the right path, then you've just changed course a little bit and that happens, okay? And that happens a lot. So, to ask what is your north star and having started from kind of starting your own company and building it up and creating quite an exceptional company now. Like, what has been that north star that you've always held on to? And how have you, like, determined just knowing that that was it? Good. Okay. Not a curveball at all. By the way, I've reached upon a certain amount of questions and we're going to ask them. That wasn't one. My pleasure. Look, I come from, you know, I have six young sisters. Mum had three girls under four. We lived in the country and, you know, I just, I come from, I was surrounded by amazing people growing up and really true people, really authentic people. And I saw, I guess, the big commercial world as being a bit fake and a bit capitalist in. And I guess my north star has been to have a positive effect on that process and try and embed myself in it. I dropped out of high school. I didn't go to university. You know, I did some really shitty jobs. I was an underwater ceramic detailer for a while. What is that? It's a ceramic detailer. In the sink, you're polishing the ceramic plates. You're good at advertising. Once again, I shouldn't be here, you know, but I really fucking wanted to be here. I do want to be here. And I want to make sure that for my family, my growing family and for my family that they're proud of what I'm trying to do and the way I'm using my creative. That's what's pushing me on. Like it's a cracking answer. So jumping to kind of like the other extreme. We've obviously heard about sort of advertising and that sort of self of grit that you need to kind of build a company and keep making those campaigns in the same direction. If we're looking at sort of women in tech and we're starting to understand what are those sort of like those big partnerships or those big deals that you have to go out there, how do you just keep going through sort of like pitching that one sort of purpose? So when you're pitching in big, it's very important that you're clear about what your buyer is and if there is a need. So the first step you do is to establish that need and the more interesting you can be while establishing that need, people will come to you. It usually is when you're doing significantly large deals, it's a team effort. It's about people from different skills coming together and creating that magic for the customers. So I've done deals wherein we had and these were multi-million dollar deals where we had a few people from our side but there were some startups which were really, really good and they had a creative solution to it. So we've teamed up with them and brought the large team backing and done these deals. It's about being together in a coordinated manner and bringing that magic to the customer. So you talked a bit about teamwork and how grit is not just from one person, right? Because you can be a very determined person. How do you inspire grit with your team, getting them to be as determined as you to go to that finishing line? So you have to let go of control. You have to get other people to feel in charge and I think that is basically what motivates people to make it feel like their own. If everybody in the team feels that it is their own purpose then things will happen. That's a very important element of any kind of business that you do. Just with your large teams, filling them with grit, is that what you did? You let them take charge? So what's that about? Oh God, she's so scared about what I'm about to say. It's amazing. Look, I think there's a lot around culture. The kind of people you want to work with, the kind of people you want to work for. If you ask me what my role is in the grit process, a huge part of my job on a day-to-day basis is giving the teams air cover. I work at a regional level. A huge part of what our teams have to do in the day-to-day is they're where the rubber hits the road, right? They are in the coal mines. They're the guys having to deliver the work and make the budget and hit the profitability margin and report to finance and sell the work to the client. A huge part of what I do is I try to inspire them. I try to build a business argument for creativity because it's there. Let's be clear. Best work in the world is generally work that's actually doing a really good job for the client. And agencies that are more creative are better successfully financially. So a big part of what I try to do is I try to give the teams courage and feel like failure's okay. So that's another thing. I try to inspire the teams to be able to come to me and say, we want to do this thing, right? And it's a weird fucking... Sorry, Sam. It's a weird thing. Because, Toby, you've got the swearing down. So you swear for both of us, mate. But thank you, my boy. A big part of the job is for the people to be able to come to me and say, we have this cool idea and we can't sell it. So how do we sell it? And we go, great. You can't sell it to the client in that market, but let's take it to that same brand in another market where maybe the client's got a little more budget and a little more creativity and a little more courage. So trying to inspire everyone, I think your point was really important, which is everyone should feel like they own who you are and what you do as a company and as a team. For me personally, a huge part of the grit that I do is just in letting my teams feel safe to try stuff. You know, I try not to point fingers. If stuff messes up, I tend to... This is going to be a long night. But when stuff messes... There's actually this half-bottle of rosé down there, Tobes. But thank you. But there is one of the things that's super scary when you're younger, right? When you come into the industry is you feel like failure is the end of it, right? You are going to screw up one thing and that's it. You're out. That's not how we work. That's not how we try to work. I try to encourage people to screw stuff up. This industry is evolving at a genuinely astonishing rate right now. We don't know what this place is going to look like in five years. I don't. And it's my job to know. And I don't. All I can tell you is doing the right thing and doing great creative work is what's going to get this industry through the next five to ten years as it all changes. And my job is to inspire the grit in my teams that they feel like we have their back as we can. Sometimes there's a fun line between giving your creative the ability to dream really big. And then you end up with a really big idea and like let's just call it champagne and you get a big budget. There can be some really kind of very big disparities. So Charlotte and I got stuck on a very, very positive rental project where I had champagne dreams and she had the budget of nothing. I had a ribena budget. So I have a lot of questions around kind of the company that you've built but there's something interesting about that sort of like when do you just keep going and when do you call it quits? Like at what point have you found in your 16 years plus, possibly a few more but I don't think you're age away of like working in history but at what point have you kind of gone this is the point to call it and this is the point to just keep going? I think it depends on the client to be honest because sometimes you go and pick up a brief from a client and they have these grand ideas about big top tents and helicopters and marching bands and all this kind of stuff and you ask them what the budget is and they say it's 10 grand and you think okay, no. But then there is always the opportunity to upsell. So I think if you're faced with a situation where you can't deliver anything within the budget that you've been given then you kind of have to fess up and just say okay, Mr. Client, your ideas are great but absolutely no way on this earth is this going to happen but occasionally there is the opportunity to say okay, this is what you wanted so yes we can give you this but actually if you can find an extra bit of cash you could have this and that will deliver you XYZ so I think it's about reading the client it's about reading all the different particularly from an experiential perspective how much time have we got to deliver this where do we have to do it what are the external factors that are totally out of our control like is it going to be outdoor therefore is it likely to rain therefore do we need weather protection and etc so I think where you draw that line there isn't a line that line depends on where you place it and that is I think based on your communication and your relationship with that particular client so when is the time when you push so we did an event quite recently actually for Singtel it was a B2B event and they had a five grand budget isn't that just you turning up? yeah huh? isn't that just you turning up? no, mostly I'm free on those events and it was quite a prestigious event in terms of their involvement they were sponsoring an event it was the SMA award I don't know if anyone went the theme was let's get intimate so it was all about you know what corner party? five there were no sex toys but it was all about kind of getting to know your client get to know your brand blah blah and so you know naturally the creative kind of thinking for most of the other sponsors that was there went towards an amorous love kind of theme and we decided to push it a little bit bearing in mind Singtel's quite a kind of it's a yeah conservative very kind of traditional family brand we set up well we proposed that we would set up a lie detector booth and encourage total strangers to do a I have never type thing with their hand in an electric lie detector so not only were we asking the client to encourage people to be electrocuted in front of people we were also asking people to air their dirty laundry and they went for it and it turned out to be absolutely awesome and it cost them a little bit more like a grand and a half more so it wasn't scary but that was a we also presented some really kind of safe ideas like a photo op I mean come on but you know by offering them a range of ideas where they could have something that was quite safe or they could have something that with a strategy that linked their audience with a message and an activation that was going to deliver for their audience with their trust in us and the way that we sold it they bought it and they loved it so it can be done I think there's another part to that kind of the grit and the tenacity and the persistence so one of my favorite stories is around a campaign called Dove Evolution which was the first ever big Dove ad the girl gets retouched in real time you may not know don't look at me like that it's not even a McCann story it's from the other agency I worked at she's genuinely terrified it's amazing what you don't know about that ad is when the concept was first come up came was developed in Toronto and they took it to the clients the clients rejected it the guy who shot it was an Australian art director around two shoots that's his girlfriend in that commercial he shot that around two shoots he was doing and he got the makeup artists to do him a solid and do a makeup and he filmed it and then he edited it and then he took it to the Dove clients and they went oh it's not bad and they put it on YouTube and this is 2009 I think this came out no 2007 it came out and it was on YouTube which didn't really have anything it's in 24 hours which on YouTube in 2007 is a fairly big deal and then they put it on TV the entire thing cost $800 $800 it won two can grand prize it literally defines what Morton Dove stands for when the campaign for real beauty he shot it in a spare time with his girlfriend so the other bit of grit too is like hack the hell out of the idea you know if you can't sell it now put it in your back pocket keep it for six months find someone else who'll buy it find someone who'll help you make it so that's the other thing is like don't persistence isn't just sometimes it's pushing through right away sometimes it's loving the idea enough to know when to stop put it away and come back to it there's definitely a phrase that I've known of kind of like kill your darkness and so it's an element of know which ones to keep or which ones to kind of put to bed so have you had a moment where you sort of like kept going with one of your ideas that you just wanted to see go out there and it's in the book I can see the APD guys go yeah I have I've flogged a couple of ideas in my career the first one was for a travel client it was for Rex to go it was in Sydney there was Junior in the agency and they were a very new client of ours I wanted to brand a million ping-pong balls and pull two semi-trailers trucks up to the top of Martin Place just before lunchtime and just let the sides go and just flood Martin Place with brand of ping-pong balls but luckily everybody's going to come out at lunchtime and see all they're going to be amazing and they'll pick them up and they'll probably remember it and hopefully go back to their desk we've gotten a lot of trouble for it but I still kept pitching it and I had a decent relationship with the client I thought it was way too serious I got them really pumped they weren't so pumped I rebranded that deck and pitched it to three more clients we never really got on the ground and more recently I won't go into the details but we're working on a camp-bang called Robot Cats which I'm still trying to get on if you see emcee a robot cat out there you'll know I've got a project with AI and animals we can do it the internet loves robots and cats so sure it's going to work it takes a lot of bravery to stand up here and tell stories when you haven't succeeded we actually did an entire session called Triplet, the Fabulous Female Cockups and it takes great great people to talk about the things that don't work so really if you cared in terms of it's got a lot of campaigns that have worked and they don't involve pink pups to take completely one of you is a table tennis national junior champion it's definitely not him what did you learn from being such a great sport athlete that you were born into your kind of business I was born in a very traditional Indian family so my mother always wanted me to be girly, play with dolls, play with stuff like go singing dancing and I was just not made for it so when I went into sports it was it was something very different from what everybody else had imagined so I played the districts table tennis as well as skating both I topped the district I went to the state and I did pretty well and then I went to the nationals but when I went to the nationals I realized that India at that stage and even now is a developing economy it's very risky for girls to play at that level and they were open toilets the facilities were not as well established we were put in a bogey which used to stop at every station 48 hours which could have easily taken us 6 hours to be there and it was rough so when I came back from there I had perceived and I had taken a few medals there but then I decided I did not want to pursue sports as much as I wanted to do so the whole experience what it taught me at that time was there is a learning in everything when I came back to sales I felt the same feeling there were some some deals I won, some deals I lost but it is the same experience as playing table tennis so many years ago you play the game and that's the fun of it so that's what I learned from that do you think Accenture would go under the ping-pong ball running? we could try it together that's great that's great so this actually isn't a question in the sheet but we've talked a lot about the positive aspects about grit determination and getting stuff done and if it doesn't really work out you can pocket the idea maybe try to repurpose it or continuously try to pitch your ping-pong idea after 20 years but are there any negative side effects in grit? Have you ever hired someone who has so much grit that it has maybe any kind of negative side effects? I'll give you guys a minute I think are there negative sides to grit? yeah of course there are are there negative sides to any job or any passion? of course there are it can be really tough holding on and getting kicked in the teeth you know and especially if it's something you believe in and passionately chasing down getting a million ping-pong balls if I'm going to mine plays it can be really tough and I mean we talked about it earlier it's get knocked down five times get up six so you have to do that as an individual and you have to know that creative by its very essence it is confrontational and creating incredible ideas and really why lateral thought out ideas it's really difficult it's going to be quite abrasive for people to understand or come on that journey with you so you should expect a lot of resistance and resistance can be quite painful being told no or laughed out I mean I've been laughed out of so many great songs and Robert Katz has laughed me out a few but it's going to happen it can be really painful especially as a grader or as an artist or as one of those individuals so as an end to happen all sorts of things which most creators are so I think as far as hiring people with too much creative I don't think you actually can because if you're hiring them then you're there to bring them on a journey to help them shape that creative so I don't necessarily think I mean you can hire dickheads who are aggressive and that's probably and then you just watch that stuff pretty quick but no I've never hired somebody who had too much grit and I think it comes down to if you found your groove and you're creative then when you do come up with an idea or concept or something then you believe in it you believe in it a million percent and it comes from somewhere fantastic now if you're wrong and you're completely wrong then you're not really creative if it's not the right solution you're not doing it for the client you're doing it for yourself if you want to do a giant because you want to do a giant not for the client for the outcome then you're on a pretty sketchy ground anyway so I think there's true grit and then I think there's an amazing area so I think there's a message it feels like there's a very far in line between sort of arrogance and grit shall I have any insights before I moved over here I was working at Leobanette in London and it's a huge agency with 500 people in the building the whole floor of it was dedicated to the creative department and our ECD thought he was a pretty big player and he was he's an incredibly talented guy but he he was never prepared to listen to anybody else's ideas or just he was one of those guys that was always right and because he's the ECD a lot of the creative directors would just go oh okay well yeah I'm agreeing with him rather than standing up for themselves and I think a lot of the time he was right actually but a lot of the time he wasn't and I think he actually stifled the creativity and damaged the confidence of a lot of the talent that was in that agency I think now working for a small agency and having one creative in our team there's only six of us in the whole company so we all have to be creative we all have to come up with ideas we all have to contribute in brainstorms but that hasn't always been the case and actually it's kind of it's better that way for us at the moment because it gives everybody the opportunity to have a voice in a big agency I think you actually have to dig a bit deeper like personally emotionally you have to shout louder you have to kind of be a bit more in people's faces and you have to have a bit more of an ego but I think I don't think he had too much grit I think he had too much ego which is very different but it's a fine line like you say but I think it's the responsibility certainly of senior creative people guys or girls I think it's our responsibility to nurture the talent and encourage younger people in the industry junior talent to really believe in themselves and be prepared to put themselves on the line with their ideas and believe that they've got a chance to be heard One of the reasons we run she says is to try and develop more creative talent coming into the industry 8% of creative directors globally are female the eight years is to make that so much bigger having been a creative director for a while and never had a female boss I think it's quite amazing to sort of step into an industry full of guys now I think it's quite incredible because it makes you quite resilient and it makes you kind of quite brave and you can learn from some amazing guys that are doing incredible creativity I think you do just have to match that bravery that others have and sometimes even evenings like tonight are about doing that it's about going you've got a boy to use it and start to have those conversations and start to sort of stand up for your ideas just how do you see almost the growth of talent inside the cat to make sure that women are able to reach the top ranks it's probably a sound question I'll channel my inner politically correct person so I think there's two fundamental things to talk about the first is this industry has a huge fucking problem with diversity and inclusion we need to do better one of the things that is most astonishing to me consistently and I have a mother who is a creative director is the fact that in the industry where about 75% of most of the products that we sell are bought by women the creative departments are still led by men it's astonishing it doesn't mean men can't make great work for female products or female purchase products it also doesn't mean women can't make great work for male purchase products but it is astonishing the level of the lack of representation that I think is there we at McCann we are on a journey I think any industry that any agency that tells you they're there in diversity is full of shit right please don't quote me on that to any publications but no one hi how you doing I'm Jess from McCann and I'd like to say that most agencies are full of shit no I'm joking but everyone's on a journey right and we are in that really interesting space where it's like how much do you positively discriminate right how much do you skew quotas to recruit right because it's hot and where it's really interesting for me and where we're starting to focus a lot more as McCann is women drop out of creative departments at the mid level they come in at almost exactly the same number you look at Miami you look at award school you look at the ad schools in Australia you look at the big advertising colleges women enter the creative industry at about 50-50 to men they drop out at the mid level right and the women who do get to the senior levels they are the exception and not the rule right so what we're trying to do now is build a band right across that middle level so how do we keep them in the industry right and it's a really glib I'm going to branch for a second it's a really glib response that you get back a lot which is women are going to have babies right women making 79 cents on the dollar when you talk about women of color making 65 cents on the dollar to men everyone goes well you're not factoring in maternity leave right that's not necessarily the reason why women are dropping out the reason women are dropping out is because the creative departments are still heavily skewed to a cultural confirmation bias right which is you have middle aged white guys recruiting middle aged white guys or young white guys that dress like them that watch the same Netflix shows that's a real that's a real struggle oh god she's actually having a heart attack okay but that's a real that's a real, come on now it's a real struggle because you want to recruit people into your world that reflect back your values right where diversity gets most interesting is bringing in the people that aren't like you right that's where the work gets better that's where the things that we make are better these are more interesting statistically businesses that have 50% female representation at a board level do better right that's not me going full feminist matriarchy over a shit on you that is actually data that is wall straight financial times data and yet most businesses aren't 50% right so we're looking at something that's beyond a business issue we're looking at a cultural issue right so you look at things like blind recruitment what happens when you're asking your creative directors to look at books where they don't know who the person's book is they just look at a book they don't know is it a male is it a female creative they have no idea do the first short list without any names on it because what a lot of the time what happens is they're looking for other guys they're looking for people they know they're looking for people that work at networks that they know so blow it up don't look at don't meet the person meet the work first right so it's a journey there's no one's there yet we're working on it we're not perfect we don't have anything like the global senior female representation we should but we're trying ish hell yeah toads it's horrible so as she says we're keeping about 15 to 20 minutes for Q&A so anyone has questions right now burning questions please ask you get to have free lunch with those I've already sent out the best way not in the solar one hi I'm Laura I'm a freelance strategist and I have a question mainly because I want a free lunch I actually have a question based on what Jess was saying which was at the very beginning you talked about the fact that companies will hire you because you do what you do better than they could do it which I think is a really rudimentary and essential part of the client agency dynamic but there's a really interesting shift going on where a lot of clients are saying well hang on let's insource a lot of talent let's take someone who is a really great agency person and make them the head of a centre excellence or let's take someone who is a media person in the head of it and it's going to shift the dynamic of what is great because it's gone from a team that have a certain set of skill sets to a team that have evolving skill sets so your client themselves are changing so my question for you is in terms of creative grit what do you think is the grit that you're going to need now that that client agency dynamic has evolved what do you think you would recommend taking it forward in the next five years I can bellow where is the other microphone testing testing see most people didn't hear that because the mic wasn't on so it's a really you're actually in time it's a really interesting phenomenon when you talk about in-house agencies I would refer you to the Pepsi Kendall Generat right now bless it right now bless it let's be clear and I trolled the crap out of that piece of creative that was an astonishingly bad piece of work we've all made pretty shitty pieces of work it's easy to point fingers but we've all made that one ad where we're like please don't tell anyone I worked on that where that piece of work to me symbolizes we're in-house agencies is a struggle is when you rely on one client for your paycheck when you're inside their business you are drinking their Kool-Aid and absolutely the brand managers that you work with good brand managers are super passionate the Dove clients I used to work with genuinely walked and talked diversity and inclusion they were about female empowerment Dove was the Dove campaign for Real Beauty was invented by the original global Dove brand manager when she tried to sell in the idea of a brand with Mission what's the point she went and interviewed Unilever's board members she interviewed their daughters and she asked them about their body image and these were girls between like 10 and 15 and they all said they're fat they're ugly I hate my freckles and she showed their fathers the film and she said Dove has an opportunity here to change this conversation right that was conviction that was creative grit right I love those clients where we have a job to do is agency partners is to pull them out of that Kool-Aid because they end up in a cycle where they're like oh my god this is amazing so we've got this new innovation right and the pellets are blue and I'd like you to do it and you're like I don't what that is no no don't do that you know what am I okay it's totally it's okay it's fine so I used to work on Kodak right bless god bless gone too soon right and Kodak had this amazing brief with a brief they called us in and they said right so we want you to do a campaign about how we invented the digital camera and we went did you seriously that's actually pretty cool and they said yeah we invented the digital camera in like 1979 and we were like guys how did you miss that and they said well all our business was in film right so we stopped production we never produced them but we'd like you to make a campaign telling everyone we were first right and I'm like okay so just so let me let me repeat this batch you in the words of an agency partner which is so you invented possibly one of the largest technological innovations of the last 50 years you didn't realize what you'd invented so you put it in a bottom shelf and now that everyone's gone past you you'd like to make a campaign to remind everyone that you came up with it first but you were too stupid to know what you made and they're like uh yeah we we probably shouldn't make that campaign I was like no don't don't do that right so I think to the point of in-house agencies you know we have a job to do that I mean they happen everywhere Apple's got him in house they hide Torkelsy from Gray who's a rockstar creative I don't know if you've noticed the best work that's been done on Apple is still being done out of Chai at day right um a lot of big agencies um are worried about this so far I haven't seen a great piece in-house work because I do think you get Stockholm syndrome right you you engage too much you lose that clarity and I think you also lose the gravitas of being able to go to your agency ECD and go I've just got a really shitty brief and I think the brief's wrong and you global at your ECD can't go into that client and say the brief's wrong because he's been paid by them right so that's the in-house agency thing I think in terms of what we need to do we have a I'm gonna say I'm doing a McCann spiel here which I'm which I'm not but there's a really cool phrase that we throw around a lot which is creativity is the only way to survive right sounds glib sounds like a hashtag I actually have a t-shirt with it on it which I did not wear this evening thank you Sam um but it's true right I think the only constant we have right now is that we are the creative people right I think the channels are expanding I think ad blockers ad blockers is interesting everyone says to me oh my god ad blockers we're all fucked right we're all in trouble and I go actually this is the best possible time to be making creative work because you know what my clients kind of fought to make shit work because no one will watch it right ad blockers is the best thing that happened in my creative department in the last like 30 years right because now actually we have an imperative to make great work right so I think if you ask me what the thing is the next five years you know I think it's a lot about what what Tome said earlier which is find your North Star find your conviction find the ideas that you love that are right and push them right because now more than ever I think clients know they know less I think we went through a long time where we were their suppliers I think as socials exploded I think as e-coms exploded I think as analytics is happening I think as segmentations have got more nuanced and more complex clients are struggling to navigate this world right if we are their compass right it doesn't matter what happens in five years doesn't matter what channels explode you know 50 years ago everyone said radio was dead you know radio is okay in some markets it's dead but in general radio is alive and kicking every single evolution that we've had in communications has just added to the portfolio nothing has gone right everyone said there's too much information overload right they claimed to call it we've gone through the age of information we're supposedly stepping into like this age of experience Charlotte as an experienced expert like is there something that you're seeing that's kind of coming to fruition that like in today's world there's something exciting about the kind of creativity that's happening in experience like do you see that is that it again don't try to get tested for life it's a process that was power that's stuff that was the most fascinating stuff I was crying really I was just tweeting I think that you would say just tweeting all the stuff that I should have said so we're obviously looking at this dynamic between kind of clients and agencies now you work quite closely with agencies and with clients so where do you find that line of who's coming up with the best creative long story of question agencies I think I think the the whole I think the whole thing about like building business and being like creating success that comes through largely in my experience and maybe my experience is different to everybody else's but largely through relationships that you build whether that's relationships with your clients or your suppliers or your team or you know random people that you meet the majority of the business that we have like got for our agency since we have started in Singapore is through people that I've met mostly over booze Miranda I'm looking at you and yeah you know if you know what you're talking about whether it's experience related creative whether it's digital related creative whether it's press or out of home or whatever the clients aren't being honest with you or with themselves if they think their ideas are better yeah they might put ideas on the table but genuinely the majority of the time they don't think their ideas are actually better they are they want to put their idea on the table to say there you go that's my ten pence worth ten cents singers are in Singapore but they I honestly think the majority of the time certainly with my clients they absolutely expect me and our agency to blow their idea out of the water with something better and I think if we continue to do that I think the future is whatever we make it to be honest Hi my name is Christina and I'm a writer and I have a question about inspiring creative grit and creative confidence in a team how do you get them comfortable with taking risks and thinking outside the box and perhaps understanding that failure might just be a stop along the way to something really successful um I have an explicit example to that actually you think we'll go? um no when I came to Singapore I've been in Singapore ten years next month and when I came to Singapore in 2007 I came up as the vice president of Asia for a creative agency here um the Asia for them was a five hundred square foot office in both key and it was me in a part time Singaporean chair Pat Lynn who's still a great friend of mine um and I really didn't know what the fuck I was doing and so over the next couple of years we grew that business to 15 people we and I say we because Pat was part time admin part time telemarketer and just sort of working out what she was getting into but and and over the course of a couple of years we built that agency with a few million revenue and Pat rose I mean she was the GM effectively um and uh and I still remember we were doing an event in Hong Kong and she fucked up massively and there was a whole lot of printed stuff a couple of brands worth of stuff printing for this event that was required and it was stuck in customs because she had filled out something specific and she was in tears and completely broken um now it's not necessarily around reality but certainly and she came to me going you know I'm really kind of like it's okay you know like we sort this out and and we did and we went for a drink later on she had one drink and and flushed up massively red and got embarrassed about that again and we've not even read it but um you know she just said thank you you know because it wasn't about the mistake I knew she was trying her ass off and it's the same with creative or tech or HR or whatever um or sales or or big pop um if you're trying your ass off you know you need somebody to just pick you up dust you off and go it's okay you know like it's get knocked down five times get up six and as long as you can teach that or encourage that with anybody above you you can sometimes be above you and encourage them as well but below you or your peers or your friends uh if you can encourage that kind of uh attitude uh to anything where you put yourself out on a limb then uh you know you know I'm absolutely 100% ready for me people have picked me up and I've screwed up or come up with a really stupid idea and embarrass myself in front of a client um or in a brainstorm or whatever and there's a few people that said you know that was pretty dumb but you know think a little bit harder I think a little bit better next time and there will be a next time uh and we were talking about this earlier is that when you sort of sometimes when you enter the industry because you're a junior you think that that's it right I mean Jess was saying that if you screw up it's all over it's not all over you know it's all a process and we all go through the same process it's like being a kid and going to your parents you know thinking your parents they were never my age they don't know what I'm looking you know uh of course they were you know and it's you know getting knocked down five times get back up six this is a side note that ended up running that agency uh and then went off and sat on her own so uh you know she's absolutely one of my favourite people in Singapore um and a huge success so um you know everybody fucks up you know and the grip is getting back up that six time after being hit down five so it does get back up and know that everybody else is done can I add something to that so um two things that we kind of do it's slightly different for us because we're much smaller um but we have uh two things that we do one is uh we have a rule that's on a massive piece of paper in our tiny meeting room which is which says there's no such thing as a bad idea in a brainstorm and oh no obviously there are obviously there are but but in a brainstorm to try and encourage people to at least put something just say something have an idea we say there is no such thing as a bad idea in a brainstorm so when we do sit down in our brainstorm obviously there are terrible ideas that come out of it a lot of them are mine but all of them that come out of it are put up on the board if they then get wiped off for whatever reason we'll always find a strategic way to get rid of my rubbish ideas but um for the ideas that don't work we will talk about them as a team and we will decide that actually maybe this doesn't right doesn't fit the audience doesn't really fit the strategy we're going down that messaging is going to be tricky to do that so maybe let's push that one to one side but we will always encourage everybody to at least chuck their hat in the ring and have a go so that's one thing we do and the other thing that we do is we all sit down on our weekly status meeting of all projects that we do every Monday each we take it in turns each week for one of the team to share some work some experiential work ideally but often it veers off into digital and other types of advertising marketing an example of some work good or bad that has been done either in the region on our doorstep or globally but find something that has captured their attention they present that idea to us that campaign to us and they give us their opinion on why they chose it and what they think of it whether they like it, whether they hate it whether they think it works whatever and we discuss it as a team and there's no right or wrong in that situation it's not our work so everyone's entitled to their own opinion and it just really encourages people to feel to kind of grow in their confidence about talking about the type of work that agencies do the type of work that goes on in our industry and to not be scared of having an opinion about things for fear that they might get shot down or we don't treat them with kid gloves if we've got something to say we'll say it but I think particularly with a junior team people that maybe haven't had the experience of working with some super experienced people it's really important to encourage people to feel just brave about their voice that they've got we have a last question alright hi my name is Angra so when we talk about the new things coming we know that marketing automation is actually coming to this part of the world so as like agencies I was just wondering what is your view about like the marketing automation in creative or in any others if you have any kind of tactics or like how to cope with it what's how to prepare for it or whether we actually should prepare for it or not what do you think that was rude apparently it's so McCann Japan actually invented I don't know if you those of you don't know an AICD we invented an AICD last year I'm really worried for my job now it's really interesting it was actually really cool out that it made which I'm not don't worry you're great but still it's cheaper but so there's a couple of things I think it goes back to what are we actually what do we make so I think that there's we if we are suppliers of assets right if our job is to give clients stuff right because that's what programmatic is going to come in it is already doing it it's doing it pretty well if we are going in and we are strategic brand partners to our clients if we're going in and helping them make proper long-term decisions about their businesses and what their business needs to look like and what their brand needs to be I genuinely don't give a shit who's doing the banner ads right I don't I don't care who's there I'm very sorry I'm don't care who does the targeting messaging I don't care what the breakdown is of the segmentation or the geo targeting that can go to Cyberdyne Systems and the Terminator I don't care right our job is to be brand leaders our job is to be creative our job is to bring that thing to the client that a computer can't do yet that that being said I would like to point out that Elon Musk says the end of the world is going to be brought around by artificial intelligence so just keep an eye on let your toasters and shit but no we should be prepared I think and microwaves also because apparently Donald Trump is looking at us through microwaves or Obama right it's true but I think it's no I think it's a totally valid question I think our industry is shifting right I would imagine 50% of the jobs in our industry right now won't exist in 10 years right doesn't mean there won't be new jobs doesn't mean there won't be new things we do what we do right now it won't be this shape in 10 years I think that's kind of pretty cool you know I think it also means what you need to be good at now is going to change but to the points everyone's made earlier too I mean grit is everything right having a belief having conviction having human intelligence having EQ knowing how to sell something to a client that we do there is no robot that can do that right so exactly the humanity of what we do is hugely important it will be more important than ever particularly when the robots rise up I'm just saying eyes on the robots more than anybody else has before so I think there's a few ways that you can look at creative grit it's been a really wonderful panel kind of paneling guys all expressed quite different opinions and a lot of kind of stories I think that's a bit kind of gets us open to working out what are sort of creative grit is and what that looks like these events are kind of put on by people and it's been a really wonderful night tonight so I would suggest everybody go and refill their wine have a few too many because that's how relationships are built alcohol is the key there's some great people who have served you food alcohol and given us a lovely venue never mind filmed us in awesome ways a couple of notes from the she says group who's your mama is actually a mentoring a mentoring series we've kind of started so we're pairing up mentors and mentees now everybody in this room should go and have or find a mentor but you should also be mentoring everybody in this room has the ability to share knowledge with somebody else it doesn't matter your age or anything else please look after those that are around you if you want to sign up to be a mentor or mentee email yourmama.singapore.gmail.com the blackest I could be I believe it's a person of colour November we will have a social session we call it a night with basically all of you come and join us for a few beers it gets a little bit loose it's very fun CC Girls is a personal project of mine and it's about building grit and determination in young kids if you do skateboarding you've got climbing and surfing I'm currently looking for some creative help whether you're a writer, a social expert or an art director come and chat to me afterwards or drop me an email at lizzieatcsgirls.org it's an awesome way to find a coach for really young kids we're talking under 12 year old girls and they have a lot of fun skateboarding finally networking that's right now that means grab a glass of something because you are only as good as your network thank you very much