 Everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are in the Palo Alto studio for a CUBE conversation. We're going to take a little bit of a different tack than our normal tech conferences, but really kind of along the same theme with women in tech and diversity and really getting to better outcomes. But we're going to talk about the advertising industry, which is a little bit different for us. We're really excited to have Kat Gordon, the founder of the 3% conference, join us in the studio. Welcome, Kat. Thank you. So for the people that aren't familiar with the 3% conference, why don't you just give them kind of the 411? Yeah, sure. So I launched it in 2012, and the number 3% refers to how many creative directors and ad agencies at the time were female. So out of 100% of creative directors, only 3% were women. And the reason that it just bugged me for a long time was because I knew that the consumer marketplace, which advertising is supposed to motivate, is primarily female. So you have mostly these ideas that spring from a male sensibility trying to motivate a female marketplace. And I just couldn't understand not an activist movement, not a, I'm female and it should be different. Kind of like business suicide, why are we doing this? I am part of that 3% worked as a creative director for 25 years, and just could not understand why my industry did not see the imperative to put women in top leadership positions on the creative side. It seems so bizarre, but I guess we've all watched Mad Men now on TV, right? So we saw the budding, creative director trying to break on the scene. But you would think with, again, women controlling, and I know it's more than 50% of the household spend or whatever the historical numbers are, that that wouldn't be the case. And you would have more women involved in the creative to touch that. So is it just a legacy thing? I mean, why do you think that happened? Because you're like retail, like in Macy's or Nordstrom's, there's a ton of women in senior management coming up through the buyer ranks. Why do you think it's that way? Well, it's, I know why it's that way, because I've done research about it. And it's part of a legacy problem, which you alluded to, kind of the swagger of the Mad Men era and that a creative leader is perceived to be a dude. And then it's also just a lack of support for motherhood. So a lot of women, once they're eligible to become creative directors, are normally in their childbearing years. And advertising has become a very unpredictable kind of life. If you don't sell the concept in meeting one, you're working all weekend or you're on a plane. So it's a difficult field to have a family. And so that's another reason, lack of mentorship and just kind of outdated notions of, you know, what creativity looks like. And so much of what we see and we see 3,000 ads a day, every one of us, including our kids. 3,000. 3,000. And if you start to watch them, you'll notice that there are stereotypes that keep repeating. And one of the reasons why women are needed is just to have a different viewpoint and kind of breathe some fresh air into these notions of what we look like as a society. Right. And not even that so much. We talked about all the time at tech conferences when we cover the women in tech angle and most of them now have either a track, a networking thing, an evening, a pre-event. But really just the concept of diversity of opinion just gets better outcomes. It's really that simple. Cause we all look at things through bias ties. We can't help it. We've been raised and we've seen things when we've been influences by our lives. So you just have to have people that come in that put a different lens, a different spin. And the stories you hear about people, especially when they're doing workshops and things that come out from the quiet person in the back of the room that never really had an opportunity to say things, a huge impact and really can change the game. That's exactly right. And there's tons of research from Harvard and Catalyst about diverse perspectives actually not only create better ideas faster, they also result in better error detection in businesses like tech. So I think one of the things that happens in advertising, if you're a creative in advertising, you're often working odd hours and it's almost a very intense, intimate relationship you have as a creative team, art director, copywriter. And so a lot of times you work with someone that you just would wanna hang out with late at night and so you hire someone that looks like you. And what's sad about that is that I always say that if two people have the same kind of background, then one of them is redundant in the idea-making sessions. So you need that otherness, you need that discomfort. So it's interesting in preparing for this interview, I was reminded we did a show at SAP Silicon Valley where they invited the makers organization who's the leading kind of women's centric documentary company with PBS for a screening of, I think it's called Makers in America, women who make an American business, they have lots of them for different categories. And one of the women they profiled is Mary Wells Lawrence who is from the advertising agency, Kick and Tail. Her kind of breakthrough campaign was the Braniff, February members are probably too young, colored planes, really dressing up the flight attendants and did great and the boss said, I'll pay the money, we'll recognize you but we're not gonna give you the title. And so she had to quit and start her own firm which was very, very successful. Yes, Lawrence Wells, Rich Green. Yeah, Lawrence Wells, it's like a law firm, right? Wells, Rich Green, but the campaigns are so iconic, you know, pop-up fizz fizz with Alka Seltzer and I can't believe I ate the whole thing. I mean, these things that to me just kind of represent television in the 70s and the 80s. So you would think that that would start to change it but when is your 3% number measured? It doesn't sound like things are really changed. Right, well we did, we have made a dent which is nice. The number of female creative directors in America is now up to 11%. Okay, that's good. But there's absolutely no reason why it should not be 50% and unlike tech, tech has a pipeline problem. Tech is trying to get young girls interested. There are more young women graduating from portfolio centers than young men. So I almost find that the most criminal thing about the problem I'm trying to solve for is that we have the women, we train them, they're skilled, they have the great portfolios and we hemorrhage them right when they're most valuable. And so it's a fixable problem, which is the good news. Right, right. So yes, but I know Mary Wells, Mary Wells Lawrence. Mary Wells Lawrence, yeah, I met her at the Cannes Advertising Festival last summer. It was a thrill to meet her because she is a legend. Yeah, flick your big, the mightest touch. I mean, it goes on and on and on. Now what's interesting is the tech side would also say it's really not a pipeline problem. That it is this retention problem. And in fact, I can't remember one of the IVs, I think just graduated more women computer engineers than they did men. So, but I think it's some of the stuff that you talk about. It's hitting the ceiling. It's leaving to raise babies. Right. And we were just talking about before, Marissa Meyer says she works 130 hours a week, but she's got two kids. So, you know, where does that kind of shake out? That's not necessarily a good thing. Right. So talk about the conference a little bit and how you guys are trying to take specific steps to address the issue, help the women that are there, help the employees, help move that number. Right. So. Employers. We have kind of what I call our nuclear weapon. And it's a document, a living document called 100 Things. And it literally are, it's micro-actions, small things that any company outside of advertising tech anywhere can implement to create more inclusive cultures. And these are things that we have either witnessed through our traveling events. We've been to every major US city and put on an event. We've been to London. We're going to Toronto later this month. And so we listen and we hear what are the things that people are saying they need or crave or what are the programs that are creating traction. And it's micro-actions. It's doing micro-actions with consistency. But I would say that the number one thing we advocate for, and we did our own research around this, is that if you have 25% or more women in leadership in a company, all of the other things that the women that work there tell us they care about improve. They self-correct. And so the fastest way you can actually keep women in any company is put women into leadership. That's funny. We're at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, early this year in Phoenix. And there's a group called the Athena Foundation, I think it's called. Oh yeah, I'm familiar. And they're all about getting women in boards, right? It's really getting them in at the board level. Very different than say the Anita Borg Institute, which is much more focused on kind of entry level and really engineering side. But one of the things Anita Borg did do is they put in place basically a scorecard where companies can go in, do the survey, score themselves, and then report back. And I thought what was really interesting is, a few companies are gonna win and they announce them at their Women in Vision Awards. Mellon Bank won it a couple of years ago. I can't remember when we won this last year. But more importantly, it provides a baseline. It provides a company that cares, a score, and something that they can work against. And we've had Kim Stevenson on from Intel a number of times and talking about really what Intel's trying to do. But most importantly is to establish a baseline. You start to put the measures in place so that you can actually see whether you're moving the needle or not. Completely and we have just done something similar at 3% where we did a benchmarking study, exactly what you're describing. We're ad agencies spoke to us under confidentiality about different metrics so that we would create a baseline for the industry and now we're opening up a certification program where agencies can ask us voluntarily to assess them, how they're doing against these key metrics that matter to the retention of women. And then those that are doing well and demonstrating leadership will be 3% certified. But you're right. I mean, the tech world took a beating in the news when they started to reveal their diversity numbers. And I was cheering from the sidelines because that's the absolute necessary first step before you can prove it anything. It's like if you wanna go on a diet, you gotta get on the scale at some point and find out how bad it is. Because it's never gonna get better if you don't know how bad it is. And so, yes, that's exactly what's needed. Okay, good. So again, just give us a date to the conference where people can get more information. How many people are you gonna have there? Who should attend? Yeah, so the event is on November 3rd and 4th. It's a Thursday and Friday in New York City. It's the weekend, that weekend is the New York City marathon, so it's a really fun time to be in Manhattan. It's at the Manhattan Center, which is on 33rd Street. And it's a two-day event. And we have, on day one, we're trying something new where we have these themed tracks for five hours. And so you basically self-select. You're either a man basseter, meaning a man who has the ability to create change within an agency or a brand culture. You're a creative director. You're an emerging creative leader. Or you're an HR talent person. And so we're going super deep on the things that would matter to those groups. And then on day two, it's more of a TED Talk style, like great inspirational speakers. We have Adam Grant coming to speak. We have Nila for Merchant. We have Marley Diaz, who's an 11-year-old social entrepreneur. So the people that should come are people who have a vested interest in their company in innovation. Truly, it's that. And men and women, of all ages, you don't have to be a creative. But if you work in a company that's trying to breed innovation, there will be amazing takeaways from our company. So I'm going to ask you one more question before I let you go. Mentorship versus sponsors. How do you see the difference? How do you see that playing out? How important is it to have both of those things within a changing culture within an organization? Right. So the way I, the definition I heard that sticks with me and I like is a mentor is somebody who talks with you and a sponsor is someone who talks about you normally when you're not in the room. So that's the person who's going to advocate for you when a promotion is available or when funding is available or when a transfer opportunity to another office is available. I think that's decidedly more powerful is to have someone in a position of authority that's in the meetings where decisions get made, knowing who you are, believing in your potential and advocating for you. And sometimes knowing better than you know yourself. Yes, what you're capable of. To put you in a position where you may not know you're ready to go. All right, well, Kat, well, thanks for stopping by and spending a few minutes. So we look forward to keeping track of the 3% conference and hopefully get a terrific event. So I want to tell you the URL. Did I? No, did you tell the URL? Sorry, I didn't. Oh, sorry. That's okay. It's the number three, the word percent and then C-O-N-F. So it's 3%conf.com. You can read the full agenda, buy tickets, see who's speaking. Okay, great. Well, the guys will put that on the lower third. So we'll make sure we capture it. So again, thanks for stopping by. Sure. Thanks for having me. All right, she's Kat Gordon. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. We'll catch you next time. Thanks for watching.