 everybody you are very welcome to our 42 courses subscriber only event with Jane Evans. I can see people are joining us here from all over and you'll be letting to join fantastic to see so many people Jane Evans activist author and champion of midlife women we're going to be talking about uninvisibility the multimedia campaign your fantastic mentoring program that has gone into a pilot program visible start we're going to be talking about your wealth of experience in marketing and copywriting Jane Evans you are very welcome that's lovely to be here and it was such a pleasure for me when Jane joined for this chat this morning I only know Jane from the 42 courses copywriting course so for me to meet Jane absolutely fantastic opportunity so Jane let's just kick off by for those who have joined today who don't know you a little bit of a bio tell everybody about yourself okay so it's a long it's a long history so and I will actually start in 1975 1975 I was a 13 year old school girl about to take my options and equal opportunity legislation came in and all of a sudden I didn't have to be a teacher and I saw a secretary I could be whatever I wanted I could choose whichever subjects I wanted at school and I basically took this and ran with it when I was at school there was a poster in my biology lab which was talking about how a fly vomits on your food and then stomps on it and eats it and then it's your turn and it was written by Sir Charles Sarchi and I used to stare at this poster all the time going that's what I want to do I want to put words and pictures together but I didn't know what it was called I was like I want to do the posters on the underground it was and so so in those days I went to the library and basically looked up what it was found out was advertising found out that there was a course at Ealing that you could study advertising so I basically found out my route and at 20 years old I was the first female creative in the creative department at Leaguist Delaney so five years later after a spot at KHBB where I actually had a female creative director I was headhunted out to Australia and I then spent the next 25 years in Australia in my advertising career I ended up as a regional creative director at Joe Walter Thompson I ran the the the local award school which was the training program to get young people into advertising and made it you know from one woman being in the top 12 to five women being in the top 12 so you know have always been fighting for for for women and their rights are set up with the advertising federation over there I think called Cal which was creative opportunities for women where we get all the women together that will you know and have inspirational evenings with them we even had the great Barbara Noakes come out and speak to us which was absolutely fantastic but in Australia in 1995 and I don't think a lot of people know this Australia actually was the most progressive in bringing women into creative departments and I mean in 1990 I worked in a creative department that actually had 50 50 male and female creative teams which was absolutely unheard of before or after but in 1995 we basically dominated the award scene in Australia we won absolutely everything and then all of a sudden 1996 all of our careers were over or we were shipped overseas or we disappeared my copywriter at the time and I were both taken out to lunch by the local the lead headhunter after we just won like every award in the world thinking that we you know here's the riches lunch with the headhunter and we got there and they said they basically said I know that you've done absolutely everything but the guys have got together there will never be a female creative director in Australia so forget about it so at that point I was 30 something you know about to hit 35 I wanted to have a family so I bought a massive great big warehouse and I started an agency downstairs and I started my family upstairs and we were the 19th most awarded agency in South Pacific region which for an agency of basically six women and one man was pretty incredible we had clients like Maserati we had Revlon as a client and we created James Squire which was Australia's craft beer and for everything was going really well heading to be you know Joga 5 but unfortunately it turned out that I was in a financially abusive relationship and when the financial abuse was uncovered basically the physical and emotional abuse started so I basically had to throw it all away and start again so downsized from you know two and a half thousand square meter warehouse to a house with a stable block out the back to run the business and for the next 10 years basically ran a cottage industry I became known as the the beer goddess I think I created something like 18 different craft beer brands all around the world and that was basically all I did and then my youngest daughter who's a very talented singer-songwriter got an opportunity to go to music college in in the UK my youngest was about to start high school and I was bored shitless of working on beer I don't drink it I've never drunk it I don't like it I was pregnant when I got the account so it was 18 months later when I finished breastfeeding that they actually discovered that I didn't drink beer they were like you've done such a good job we can't complain now it was like but we would have never have given you the account if we'd known that and I came back to the UK and I and I took my maternity leave I had three days for both of my children because I ran my own business so I was like I'm taking a couple of years off so I went to the national film and television school I studied storytelling for the screen again thinking that I was adding to my skill space you know with branded content coming in it was like you know great opportunity to you know be even better at what I do and then in 2015 the statistic came out that only 3% of the world's creative directors were female and as probably the most ridiculously overqualified woman for the role I stuck my hand up very very loudly and was completely and utterly ignored by the industry I would have you know sort of Matt Eastwood who was the global creative director of Jay Walter Thompson went to the HR woman in London and go you have to see this woman the appointment would be made and then it was cancelled and cancelled and cancelled and cancelled I mean I had one person that every Monday morning for a year I rang to try and get a new a rescheduled appointment I got through three of her assistants and it became a standing joke every Monday with my headhunter of you know did you get through have you got the appointment I would go to interviews and I would be met with things like Jane I'd give you a job but you'd end up as the old woman at the back of the creative department doing the shit that nobody else wants I was told we'd give you a job Jane but we think you'd be bored and when I said I don't think I'd ever get bored of putting a roof over my children's head he sort of looked at me as if I was like a complete fucking weirdo the upshot of that was you know after five years of of you know or two years of time off and then you know further three or four years of not getting any work I ended up at the food bank I ended up being evicted and you know from from being the absolute top of my career to there and when I got into the food bank I mean I looked around and it was I mean it was one of the most horrific experiences of my life but I looked around and I realized two things first of all I was the only woman with all her teeth still and the other was is that I was the only woman that actually had an opportunity to get out of there and I walked out of there swearing that I would never go back and swearing that I would do everything in my power to make sure that this didn't happen to other women so fast forward to January the 23rd 2019 I think I just got I'd just done a new website and I had a piece of feedback with a portfolio and I had actually been put forward for a job I'm like finally somebody's actually on my side fighting for me and then I got the word back it was like oh we were really excited about her 50-something you know a female you know amazingness but there wasn't enough tech savvy and like this whole list of like buzzwords which was basically saying we don't mind that she's old but her work is and it was like you can't win it was like nobody could see nobody was prepared to go back and have a look at how progressive my work was I mean it was like I did the first ad ever with a divorced couple I did the first ad that ever showed a young couple working together I did the first ad that ever showed men doing housework efficiently so you know it was like you know I created one of the world's first craft beers but for some reason because I hadn't done anything in the last two years I was irrelevant um so anyway I woke up one morning and I thought are there actually any women over the age of 50 creating ads in London so I put out a tweet um 64 retweeted 64 times um and I got eight names and I went and met these women and I thought when I was setting up was a humans of New York type thing where I go and meet this amazing woman take a photograph tell her story and again when I did this created this new website you know basically the guy turned around going it's unmanageable it's you know it you know basically um you know the website you know basically criticised the website um a week later it actually was in one of the top 100 wicks websites in the world you know out of eight million websites so it was like you know I knew I could do it still um so so basically I put up the tweet um 40 days and 49 nights later I had built the website I had found 15 women I go away um you're in demand Jane oh I don't know somebody from Sweden bringing me um I don't know anybody in Sweden um yeah so I found 15 women I took their photographs I wrote their stories I set up the social media I had even sent out a press release and you know we had a feature in in um on Virgin's website and in the first two weeks of the campaign the the hashtag uninvisibility got two million views so again it was like an industry that was telling me I couldn't do it you know it was like 40 days and 49 nights I did what an agency usually couldn't do in six months um and but what happened after that was that my inbox absolutely filled with the most horrendous stories and I'll just give you three of them because I think they're relevant to advertising so one of them was a woman I used to be a PR whiz I was the top of the town I now drive a bus the second one was I was one of the world's first video jockeys I was on television every Saturday morning in the in the 90s I am now applying for jobs as a hotel made the third one was I was a director at the BBC working in VR I'm now wiping ass of an Alzheimer's patient and it was absolutely absolutely became absolutely apparent that a woman's career at 45 just hits a cliff and they fall off it and there is no other option for these women other than caring roles and I swear to god if one more person had told me when I was struggling to go and get a fucking job at Sainsbury's I was going to hit them because there was just this there is just this perception and it's thousands of years old but once a woman is no longer fertile she has no further use but again one of the things that people were forgetting is as I said at the start I was 13 years old when equal opportunity legislation came through I was the generation of the first women that had the choice to have a career it was like you know and and you the women that we're seeing have never been seen before and now narrative has been written for us and so you know we buy 50.3% of all consumer goods and yet the only time we're ever seen in advertising is in a montage as a whitehead supermodel or as the butt of a joke or as menopausal and there is no narrative for us and the reason why is because we don't exist in advertising agencies we don't exist in creative departments we don't exist in the clients agencies and the women that are still there are at the top and feeling incredibly lonely and able to do anything about it so you know we have to start changing the way that we design women's careers again as somebody that you know was there right at the very beginning and is still in here now I'm looking back on it going we have to redesign women's careers because currently it's all based on a man's life expectancy it's all based on a life meant man's biology and that no consideration has been taken for women and their lives and again it was like we do 95% of the unpaid caring work it was like that figure has not changed in the last 40 years so you know it was like if the men don't want to do those caring roles and you know again for us we're actually really very good at those caring roles so let us do what we're good at but don't let me mean that we have to sacrifice our careers and our futures and you know the facts back it up with midlife women have have half the pension savings of men 48% have no pension savings at all so if we don't do something about it now we are going to face a future where you're basically going to have half of the half of the female population retiring in poverty which is which is totally unacceptable but also if we don't change it now and we're seeing it now I mean I was in a huge thread yesterday with Zoe's game and on Twitter women are leaving the workforce at an enormous rate since lockdown women are going you know I can't be super fucking women anymore I can't do this I am absolutely killing myself and at the end of it I'm not actually earning anything and again they're looking forward going and why the fuck am I killing myself because by the time I'm a teenager I've gonna have fallen off the ageism cliff so you know it was like there is never a time when a woman's career doesn't have ages a minute it was like for me at 20 I was too young even though I'd worked for 10 years at 30 I was still too young with 10 years experience to get the next role at 35 I was too likely to have children and at 45 I was too old I was out so and that is the current pattern that is the precedent that has been set and it needs to change the strength just emanates out of you Jane and when we hear your life story the the peaks and the troughs it's not hard now to understand how you've built up that strength I really strongly admire you for it and for coming back when you hit such lows and as I said that I came to know you from the course and in fact you tell the story of your first the Australia's first craft beer story and hearing the background now to how you were working on that project really sort of adds depth to it so thanks so much for for being so candid and for sharing all of that and I did read the blog on your website it runs twice as many women have left the workforce since the pandemic and the comment is good and you're like oh why is this good so please just elaborate on why that is the reaction to this because it will actually force this change we cannot replace these women by younger women that's putting too much pressure on them and we can't replace them with men so it is actually going to force and has forced agencies to look at an amazing talent pool of amazing talent pool yeah when you say my highs and lows in my story we have 320 women on this course I can tell you they've all got my story in one shape one one way shape or form it was like none of these women have left their careers because it's been their choice it was like it's been children with special needs dying husbands caring caring for elderly parents you know and it's again if we're going to be looking at these 50 year careers 50 60 year careers we've also got to be looking at the 100 and 120 year lives and we've got to be looking at what everybody is dealing with at every stage and we have to redesign careers to to to do something about it these women that we train at visible start the first three weeks of the course is basically giving these women a massive great big hug and letting them know that the world has changed and there is a place for them and letting them build up their confidence because again you know women 55 are the fastest growing group of successful suicides and because they just you know so many women on this course were just like thank god this was coming along because I didn't know where I was going to go I didn't know what I was going to do I didn't know what to do and you know they come along on the course they all of a sudden realize just how many transferable skills they have you know the women that have left an industry all of a sudden realize that it actually hasn't changed that much they just need to learn a few acronyms and computer programs but the actual business and what they're doing hasn't changed in the slightest and you know and again there's this feeling of I thought it was just happening to me when they sit in a room with 200 women all with the same story they're sort of like they get a strength from the fact of oh this is societal this isn't just my unique situation this is this is happening to all of us and then you know they don't go and do the you know the technical part of the training and they start and well that wasn't as hard or as you know that wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be that wasn't anywhere near as daunting as I thought it was going to be and then almost like in the third part of the course they turn into pioneers they strap on the armor and go all right so if we can get back in and rebuild our careers and get to the top we can show these these other women that are leaving now because they're just overwhelmed that they can plait over their careers that they can take care of their families that they can you know be the caring human beings that they need to be and they can bring all of that experience into what they're doing so this is working across the level you know but the one place that it is not even getting through there is not even the conversation hasn't even really started in there is the creative departments they are still basically run by 87% mainly white male ecds that are not giving up an ounce of their power they think there's nothing unusual about having just having young women in their creative departments I'm going there was only young women in the creative departments in the 80s there was only young women in the creative departments in the 90s there was only young women in the creative departments in the tens in the 20s she started having women in their 30s because childcare and everything came so much better but now they've all left because they just realized your expectations of how much brain space they can give to the job far exceeds what these women are absolutely capable of so you know and and you know you come in with the message of we need to create a new narrative for mental life women you know and and we've been talking to agencies that we will work with you you know we brought together a network of the greatest female creatives of our generation all you know massive awards you know really passionate about reaching this this target market but that message just doesn't get through so you know we had a situation where there was a client I've been speaking to for two years I've been speaking to their agency for two years it was a product for women 50 plus it was like absolutely like our product and I finally got a call from them I'm like yay at this no they wanted the junior team to present their work to us so for us to check it and then they wanted to throw a little bit of money at us for social media because they wanted our language and I told them to fuck off it was like I read my I read my business partner I said I'm sorry Jackie but you know it was like I've just told a client to fuck off and she was like well you know it's not a principal unless it costs you something it was like okay we'll we'll deal with it I mean fortunately half an hour later there was they actually emailed us and was like yeah we were absolutely wrong we should have called you mean at the beginning because I basically said to them if you were working on a product for the black community and you didn't have a single black person in your creative department would you have the guts to be ringing a black woman now and asking her what she thought and you could see them all sort of going no wouldn't dare and was like so why are you daring to do it to me um we're starting to get through a little bit now the strategists are starting to realize that this is such an amazing business opportunity that we should be having midlife women creating this narrative because at the moment we're being observed and we don't want to be observed we want to create our narrative and and the way that we're being said we're a bit we keep being kid gloved it was like oh dear we're being talked to like our daughters would talk to and I always sort of say you know if you want a midlife woman you go and ask my daughter who I am you'll get a very different story than you will for my best friend it was like you know if you want to be talking to us it was like our best friends know how to talk to us it was like you know we're not delicate little flowers you know we're punks we grew up with young ones it was like you know we know how to take the piss out of ourselves and you know things like menopause is a massively complicated subject but it could be treated with humour it could be you know at the moment it's all like you've got to go on drugs you've got to go on drugs and younger women are like my god this looks fucking terrifying and it was like we're just sort of looking at it going well you know you're all guessing you don't have a clue and it was like you know so you know I think that's the point that we really do start to need to get the messaging through and you know people in creative departments if you get a menopause brief go why the how the fuck do you think I'm going to be able to do this why what you know you're not being belligerent by refusing to work on something and saying I think you should put a midlife woman on there what you're doing is you're guaranteeing your future and you're guaranteeing that your voice is going to be heard because yeah I don't want to be this you know I don't want to be observed by younger people it was like I that's not me and that's not what will make me buy another champion of the midlife woman who we strongly admire of course is Cindy Gallup who I know you work with and Cindy did her annual takedown of I think maybe it was Vogue magazine for that for the opening advertisements and I'd love to hear your take on maybe who you think is going in the right direction in terms of imagery of this of the midlife woman I mean we use these terms very widely with diversity and inclusion but we're being very much more specific today nobody none none I have been running this project since 2019 and I can honestly say that I have not I am yet to see a campaign that resonates as a midlife woman and this is backed up by research I think Bowme did some research in 2019 with this group and they basically came back and said advertisers and marketers have ignored us for so long we no longer give a shit what you have to say it you know there's some research out between menopausal women which all of a sudden midlife women have become menopausal women which is like fuck right off it was like you know that's like you know calling teenagers puberty it was like you don't define teenagers by puberty do not define midlife women by menopause but they were saying that you know I think something like 67% did not see themselves represented in advertising we don't see ourselves represented in advertising and if we you know again the menopause debate I'm you know I'm doing some work on that at the moment and you know everybody's like you know they're all rich beautiful white women leading this conversation that I don't feel like her that she doesn't relate to me in the slightest you know I'm a midlife woman that's you know fucking dying here having having hot flushes you know three times a day it was like feeling ugly dowdy in the crone stage you know the last thing I need is penny Lancaster strutting a wrong telling me I've got to have a fucking marvelous menopause and you know and for me as somebody that um actually is not in the slightest bit afraid of aging I actually relish it I love it I'm I'm fascinated to see who I become who my face becomes it's like I am enjoying watching the journey of who I become as I grow older the debate is being led by women who are terrified of aging um who are doing it because you know they want their skin to stay younger and you know and and what they're doing is actually extending menopause for such a length of time that you know it never really gets bad but it also never really gets over and again it was like you know when you're talking about the menopause debate go and talk to the women who got to the other side of it because I tell you it is fucking amazing on this side which again nobody gets that message because we're not around we're not telling our stories we're not leading the narrative you know I say to younger women imagine waking up every single day and you feel exactly the same and there's like every single emotion that you have is completely and utterly valid it's like your boobs never hurt not once not ever um you get a lift of confidence like you get a butt you get a shot of testosterone and I remember you know when I got my shot of testosterone I went holy shit this is what David Droga felt like at 22 it was like um and you know again all of that for creative women all that creativity that used to go down there all of a sudden comes up here you are inspired like never before and again this is a target market that nobody's talking about is the the the reinvention of midlife women because yes they go through the menopause stage and the stages of that I mean you know there's actually a stage called the crone stage which is when you really don't give a shit what you look like my daughters were like mum you're buying your clothes at Sainsbury's what you know it was like that's not you it's like you know what is going on here I was like I didn't care it was like a pair of black tracks you know trackypants and here in a ponytail I really really didn't give a stuff but when I got the boost of testosterone when and again when all of a sudden I had this feeling of I have no chemicals running through my body anymore it was like holy shit I might my appreciation for women went absolutely through the roof because the things that we put up with without absolutely naturally every single day without thinking about it when all of a sudden they're gone it was like the freedom and the space was just incredible so again this is a stage of life which you know these women have the money we buy everything and here we are at stage where we're reinventing ourselves it was like everybody talks about you know talking to the youth because they will be changing their looks and buying more clothes I swear to god women in their fifties almost everyone I know has gone actually you know what hold on a minute I need to who am I now who am I going forward a little bit about how your book came about invisible to invaluable unleashing the power of midlife I mean with Carol Russell um when did you think to yourself I could write a book about this so it started out it started out as a 15,000 word book which um which was basically the manifesto for for invisibility so I actually wrote it as you know I knew I was going out talking I knew that this was a new subject so it basically started out as a manifesto for midlife women I was just got the my publishing deal and then lockdown came and a lot of the things that I'd written in the book like running a family is like running a business previously have been hypothetical but all of a sudden lockdown everybody was starting to see practically they could actually see it with their own eyes that running a family was like running a business and there were so many things happening with lockdown happening that I was like I actually have to rip this up and start again um then George Floyd happened and you know I just like you know what the last thing the world needs is another book by a white middle class feminist and if this is going to be a manifesto for all my midlife women it's got to be a manifesto with more than one voiced um and so Carol and I had actually started the national film and television school together we absolutely bonded on day one and if you've read the book you'll see a very spiritual you know coincidences connection um and um we um we basically had a rule after that that we wouldn't answer the phone to each other unless we had three hours to spare because we would just put the worlds to right so everything that I'd written in that manifesto I had basically discussed you know head to toe with Carol anyway so we basically were both sitting down it was locked down and we basically spent the summer um expanding on it growing it um you know finding other stories to add in there again so that it could be you know every midlife women's story um and so we we wrote it um I think we got the publishing deal in June and we delivered the first um galley um at um in September and finished book written by the end of end of December and then out in May so um yeah it was and it's been it's been an incredible success that's going into its second print run um and I noticed there's quite a few men on this course please go and read it um and if you don't want to read it get the audiobook because seriously every man that has read it so far has absolutely loved it um and we don't blame you in any way shape or form but we do explain the patriarchy and how the patriarchy has gone against us and I think it's just as important for men to understand that we are fighting thousands of years you know we're we're from you know particularly midlife women are fighting an image that you know as I said before fertile non-fertile women have no place in society so you know it was like we go right back to the beginning it was like you know we go right the way back um and explain you know a white women's career journeys we explain black women's career journeys we explain you know the the patriarchy from a white woman's point of view you know when you add patriarchy to a black woman's it adds so much more to the mix and but we also you know um found stories of women's stories that we could scatter through it that would help these women with their life experience and my favourite story in the whole book is what is a friend of mine that I've had since 17 17 years old we were writing a book for women in lockdown in lockdown and we found women who had been in lockdown for five years um and this was a friend in Palestine who basically had gone through the interfather with her family all like stuck in the house for five years and her and a sister actually started a school to let children come to school and they had 50 children every day crawling along the ground to get to school so again it was like we tried to find as many you know and for me that was the most important story in the book was you know you've just done a couple of years of lockdown but imagine you know walking out you couldn't walk out the front door because you'd get shot and you know imagine what it would be like for children so desperate to learn and escape this that they would crawl along the ground to get there was really quite amazing so um yeah so it's a rather good story there's there's lots of really good reads in there but I think again for men to you know we need as many allies as we can at the moment because we need to change this attitude now it was like every year that we delay on this another generation of women um um um another um generation of women are being lost I just noticed you you asked me about my clio award I inherited this this is not mine I didn't win it it's one of the ones that was stolen on the year that clios went that the I think in the late 90s they had in a disastrous clio awards and um apparently there was just like a table of clios and everybody went up and storm the stage and just took them um and so this is this is one of the stolen ones that I inherited from a friend who stole it um so uh I noticed as well that you'd obviously got huge projects for for the work um I I think you're particularly proud as at Bernadine Everisto the novelist uh record the prize winner I mean just absolutely amazing to have that kind of recognition so maybe as well you'd just share you know some of the responses to the book that you got oh look you know there were women saying I got you know I I'm actually going to have to see the chiropractor because my head was nodding so much um you know it was you know other women and a lovely story the other day so a woman on our course was like I asked a male friend of mine to buy this book for me um and um and he he he was like I was a 30 year old man and he was like before I sent it to you I wanted to read it um because so that I could understand you better and he was like I was laughing I was crying I absolutely adore that I can't wait for you to read the book so we can share it so I think there's a great surprise I think there's a great surprise at how much humor there is in the book um and you know again if you listen to the audiobook Carol and I actually you know narrated it um and you can actually really sense the friendship in it it was like you know Bernadina Everisto you know the Book of Prize winner was like I felt like I was in the room while Jane and Carol were having those conversations and I think again you know if you look at it widely as well is you know we've had difficult conversations it was like you know there have been times that Carol's just gone Jane you are not listening to me I am not speaking to you for three weeks you are so wrong on this and you know she put me in time out because you know I would ask the difficult questions I would be like I need to understand what is the difference between your experience and my experience what is the Black Woman's experience as an ally what can I do to help so you know we've actually you know this book is built on us having those difficult conversations and I think we should all be having these really lovely open conversations where we can really get to understand each other um and and that we're the ones that are making the effort to learn rather than expecting our you know diverse friends to do all of the hard heavy lifting it was like you know so I think it's a great lesson in learning how to do the heavy lifting and how to share a voice obviously we've all been through men and women life changing events in the last few years and for many people it has been new opportunities have found their way into how people created new things for themselves for other people it's been hugely detrimental but I just wondered what you felt uh has been sort of the the biggest benefit for for yourself from this what did you feel you learned from this period of time we've had time in ourselves to reinvent ourselves it was an absolute freaking godsend for us um it was you know it was um it came like so so I think the January before lockdown um we actually had to run a go fund me for women in in visible in in uninvisibility because you know one was getting evicted me um another was um she couldn't afford to go bankrupt she didn't have the 600 pounds to actually officially go bankrupt um and another one couldn't afford the rent on a council flat it was you know it was we were absolutely at crunch point um and then came lockdown and everything everything just sort of like quietened down and slowed down and everybody started thinking about things and everybody started looking at things differently and you know I think it was and as I said you know a lot of the things that we've been saying um started to people started to really understand I think people started to really understand work-life balance and you know and again it was like my generation one of the things that we faced was we had as much opposition about us working from women as we did from men so there was very much a you know either you're a mother or you have a career because if you had if you were a mother that tried to have a career you were sneered at the at the gates you know you can't you know it was we really did face it from every angle um but it was interesting a couple of years before I wrote the book I was working with the client and and they based and they were saying you know women these days feel as though they have to have a career and at the time I was like like this but during lockdown I realized that most of these women had actually grown up with mothers who had worked and there was this feeling that you go to university you have a career you do this and there was never the option of just being a mother it had just been completely wiped out for us it was a choice and like a really horrendous week now which which one are you going to choose but for them there was no choice you were you have your career and you try and be superwoman and I think what happened in lockdown is first of all women were forced to spend time with their children they couldn't throw them off to grandma they couldn't send them to school they couldn't send them to childcare so they were actually forced to be with their kids 24 hours a day and I think they loved it I think they started really enjoying it I think they also saw how much their children got out of it that they sort started to see their children flourish and then I think they started looking at it going hold on a minute I'm paying this much to commute to work every day I'm spending this much on coffee every day I'm spending this much on lunches every day I'm spending this much on clothes because I've got to have five different fucking outfits every week you know I'm spending this much on makeup I'm spending this much on my hair I'm spending this much on my nails and then looking at it and they're going you know even women with a massive salary are going well I'm paying for the bloody summer holiday every year it was like you know and I think there was a real sense of actually you know what this is I'm killing myself here and that is why we've got the great talent shortage now is is because these women have just gone this working isn't worth it it's just not worth it but for the for us the women that are like well our kids have gone off to university it was like you know I haven't been able to do anything for a while I'm ready to get back in is you know a great opportunity for us to be able to do that and if we can actually start to build this as part of the career path for women that we can see this burst of energy that comes for us you know and again you know really easy to retrain it's like you don't need to send us to university for three you can send us on an eight week course that's all we need to do to retrain and you know the women that have gone into WPP are loved and adored it was like you know everybody is really you know we did an event with Mark Reid the other week and he just couldn't understand yeah I think everybody was just blown away at how welcome these women are being how everybody admired them loved them having them around and you know again it was we had 200 mentors with media comm mentoring these women and at the end of the course they all said they learnt more from the women than they taught and that they had absolutely changed their attitude on these women if those women that we trained went outside of that agency where we had changed or that ecosystem where we had changed the narrative they went back to facing the same old shit they were being interviewed with the cameras off oh sorry one hold on delivery I'll just fill in there whilst Jane goes to the door we're just going to be asking her a few more questions when she comes back and I think we'll be asking her about possibly her own mentors Irene's got a question in a minute I don't know who that was but I just so I was just Jane going just diverting there now whilst you went to the door we've got lots of the crew from 42 with us here today Irene and Jake and Chris Irene had a lovely question early on and I maybe I'll ask Irene to join us to put the question to you herself about your inspiration so would you like to join us Irene? Yes I can I actually think it might be Jake's question but I'm happy to to answer it with Lugton as Irene I'm happy to ask it so we wanted to know what are some of your top tips for having difficult conversations? Listen listen listen understand the other side so I had a friend who was the absolute epitome of everything I hated in advertising he was the the alcoholic creative director you know just sexist ages the works but we got thrown together by by fate he came back from the UK to the UK because his mother was dying and we got together because he was lonely and I was broke and so we'd go once a month to the theatre or an art gallery and so these sort of like two complete opposites the feminist and the old ad guy you know would actually see each other once a month and then came me too and my my ex-copyrightist Jane Carrot she went on to become a media commentator she ran for senate she's an author I mean she's you know a big celebrity in in Australia and Terry was so proud that he knew Jane Carrot and he was like she's got a big prime minister I'm going to know the prime minister of Australia one he was so proud to know anyway he put something up on me too that she basically blocked him and every woman in advertising in Australia blocked him for it and he was beside himself he didn't he couldn't understand it he really really really could not get to grips with it and basically for the next three months it was like a little bit of time I just gave him a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more and I understood where he was coming from because I lived in that world it was like I was there and he was like you know we had it just as hard as you did it was like you know it was so competitive it was like you know it wasn't great for any others and that was his attitude it was you know we were all in there fighting together it was like what a disadvantage did you have and you know it was like stories will come out and then and it gave me the opportunity when he was telling the stories so you know at one stage he was like oh you know it was with a great the days you know I remember there was one agency there were two creative directors used to get the production assistant to give her blowjobs under the desk well the look on my face it was like he could see like my chin wobbling and you know just he could see the visceral reaction that that had with me I was like do you realize you're still abusing that woman 30 years later and I was like and what did you do about it and he was like oh you know I looked after her and gave her a cuddle and I was like no you were being the good guys I said what did you say to the guys demanding that she gave him a blowjob under your desk oh now you're making me feel bad and it was like yeah sorry um you know I think you've got to be able to listen to their understanding listen to their experience and actually put yourself where they are and what their mindset was so he was like well I never got as far as I could I was always being fired it was always really competitive for me I was always up against it you know what more difficulty did you have and it was just gradually every little bit just like and it finally got to the end and and the point in the end was he basically I said to him I said all right Terry you know you and I we see each other as equals you know I probably won a few more awards than him but it was like you know we we um you know we were seen as equals I said what was the most you ever earned in advertising it was four times what I earned it was four times and and he just at that point he was like he couldn't work out why I was broke and he was happily retired and it was at that point that he was like oh right okay now now I see it so I think it's like I think about having the long conversation about having the conversations be prepared to have really long conversations these are things are not going to be you're not going to get through to these one or two conversations you know Carol and I you know seven years of discussing the difference between white careers and black careers and you know the experience of being a black woman you know with Terry it was six months of what does me to actually mean um so you know I think we've got to be prepared to have the long conversations thank you so much Irene and Jake I don't hear questions uh and so just we're coming towards the end of uh uh chat now Jane and it's really been very illuminating just before we go I do want to bring Chris in to put a couple of questions to you uh so Chris I'll just ask you to join us hi hi Chris how are you very well very well looking even better than when I last saw you congratulations I'm not my dressing gown this time I didn't realize they were filming me last time I turned up in my dressing gown it's a good look it's a good look I was uh I was just saying I was just saying to Steve Harrison and um he said son is best and then Giles um Edwards as well said that you're like one of his favorite favorite speakers I was just saying it's it's so nice listening to you your energy is like it's amazing um so thank you um look I think the thing is is you know one of the things I didn't say was that my whole life the one thing that I'd always been able to rely on was my talent so when I found out that that was failing me I just really did get to the point of like if I can become fucking invisible what hope does anybody else have so you know for somebody that has always had a a brief in my head and always had a client to work up it was like to not have a brief and a client was like I was going crazy so you know I made the decision that midlife women are my client uh midlife women are my brief and you know it's really easy to be passionate about something that you know you can you can actually make you know we are making a difference in lots of women's there are hundreds of women's lives at the moment I want to make that thousands I want to make that millions um and I want you know I as I said I don't need any woman having to go through what I went through because it's horrendous you know fortunately I'm strong and tough and I've got the I've got the tools to do something about it um I I can't even start to imagine what it would feel like if you didn't yeah so well I mean yeah it's amazing I I know my my wife really wanted to join this call but she's in Singapore and it's really late but um she she's looking after diversity and inclusion for Boeing so she wanted to get in touch with you I can sort that out afterwards yeah get in touch definitely what was the um I mean what's the sort of the the most favorite piece of work that you that you've that you've worked on I mean yeah I I maybe it's the book I don't know maybe it's the the organization but I is there a from an ad point of view is there something that you worked on that you really loved and then you did some great stuff okay so the greatest creative project of my life has been my children right and I think that everybody should actually be able to recognize that particularly if you're creative people you're you there is no creative project on this planet there is no brief there is nothing that that that that beats that and we should be given time to be able to do that as well um I am very proud of creating James Squire beer um you know it was we created it in 1997 there was no such thing as craft beers um you know I was I led the whole team I designed it you know worked with the amazing Jack Vaughn who wrote all the copy which again is you know one of my absolute heroes um you know I you know to be able to work with Australia's top copywriter was incredible um I um but I think the thing that I am most proud of is Visible Star it was you know we've got 20 women 19 women employed at WPP agencies I think you know we probably changed the luck you know actually physically changed the lives of about 35 women other women got jobs set up freelance businesses just regained the confidence we're now doing the same with 320 women on the course um and you know that to me is what I'm most proud of but I think you know as a creative person I haven't done the work I'm the most proud of yet it's still to come um and you know that's I love this this is one of my favorite these are my you were asking about what these are my two favorite awards so in 2019 I won this one which is B&T women in media awards a lifetime achievement award which was absolutely fantastic but the next year from out of age I got women to watch Europe and to me that is like the absolute these are the two my two favorite awards because that was like the end of my first career and this is the start of my second so um you know I and when I when I you know accepted the B&T award I said you know I'm sorry I'm going to rewrite this I'm a copywriter it was like you know this is half a lifetime achievement award it was like I've only just started so you know I think any creative any creative worth or salt um is still like even everything that I've done there's still something better to come there's still you know there's still there's still something else you know and I think that is you know again when we talk about age it was like we shouldn't be talking about age we should be talking about drive you know there is yeah I still yeah when you asked you know are there any great representations of midlife women no haven't seen one not one not ever there is not a campaign because I'm going to tell me it was like you know we've got to get through the messages to the clients that a we exist because they don't believe that we exist they've been told that there are no such thing as as you know midlife female creatives um and you know somebody's just got to be able to look at our work from 20 years ago go fucking hell they were amazing then let's give them some budget what are they going to do now I hope so yeah I mean things always go sort of sick we all don't know and I think there's there's so many uh there's so much you can learn from the stuff that's been done before I think you often learn probably more from it just whether it's from an advertising or from anything in life there's often greatness to be found in that I think also we're starting to get to the crest of the wave I we are actually starting to work on projects we are actually starting to have clients talking to us and I and again it was like you know because we're not working in there everybody's recognized that we're an important consumer group and they've just gone with the first idea which is menopause oh we've had to we talk to this important consumer group what you know it was our first idea menopause it was like the reality is is menopause is this much of our lives it might be this much if you have it badly but you know again we did a poll um you know six percent said that menopause had affected their lives 29% gendered ages and 47% unpaid caring responsibilities um so you know it was like so the conversation has started there is now starting to be a bit of a backlash on the menopause exploitation there's articles of you know and you know for me it was like you know I've been saying for three years please god do not do menopause ads about us because all you're going to do is create a brand new stereotype of mad crazy sweaty ladies which is actually going to make everything worse for us and lo and behold we just see mad crazy sweaty ladies which again is just going to exacerbate our problems but fortunately there do seem to be a lot of clients out there again a lot of midlife women at the very top feeling very lonely um are actually going hold on a minute that you know we've got to do something with this the most in the biggest consumer group on the planet why don't we start treating them with some respect and yes all right we've we've we've we've let them know that there's resources for menopause but you know it was like let's open the rest of the world up no I can't wait to see the work good luck thanks thanks Chris gonna get the brief first thanks so much Chris and we've come to the end of our session it's been truly enlightening to speak to you Jane you're just oozing energy and power and I feel like we need to send you a super woman t-shirt or something like that but it's just been absolute joy to speak to you thank you so much for joining us today on our 42 courses subscriber and speaker series and you are welcome back at any time so it's just to say thank you very much Jane Evans for joining us today excellent thank you so much lovely to see you all thank you so much it's Jane have a lovely day