One of the best-known ads by creative director Neil French is for the scotch, Chivas Regal. It reads: Yes, God is a Man.
From this pen, one could not expect much from a fellow who carries his own cigar-chomping brand development to ludicrous lengths. So, it came as no surprise when at an advertising function in Toronto he suggested that woman Creative Directors were "crap".
He said commitment to the creative process deserved and demanded 100 per cent, and most women wanted to have babies and "suckle" something. These were very injudicious comments indeed. They were also totally false.
Most women creative directors, in my view, have the same drive, same creative spark, same dogged determination to get it right - and probably more so - than their male counterparts, particularly in Ukraine. However, there are also fewer of them.
French has been pillared by feminine creative directors, and has resigned from his job as creative guru for WPP to, in his words, not cause trouble for his boss, WPP head Sir Martin Sorrell. It is the kind of penitence French seems to enjoy. He is unapologetic. He apparently loves being tossed in the Brier Patch.
My problem with the whole affair is that the avalanche of reaction from feminists has given this guy more attention, the type that he craves, than the affair deserves. The episode merely serves as another interesting footnote to a career that included trainee bullfighting, pornography and a stint as a rock group manager and debt collector. The fellow's resume reads like Forest Gump.
My view is that women creative directors and those that aspire to such posts should treat French as what he is, cartoon-esque, a parody of a 1930s black and white movie in which the hardboiled newspaper editor chomps on a cigar and shouts: "We don't need daffy dames in here."
Instead, by taking him seriously, they call attention to a non-problem, one that is no more real than when certain racial groups are identified individually as "the first black, Afro-American, native American, etc. to become... " to yawning ad infinitum. We have moved way beyond that point.
Does anyone seriously ponder such remarks by French as "you can't be a great creative director and have a baby and keep spending time off every time your kids are ill." This bespeaks an age of darkness, almost Victorian.
What it does show is how little creativity actually exists within the mind of our Neanderthal ad man French. I don't care how many "classic" ads he has in his portfolio. He's an idiot.
Does he really believe that creativity comes at a desk, in an office, in a nondescript building among a jungle of others? Is this fellow a closet 9 to 5'er, who believes and needs the comfort of fawning underlings at hand.
Most creative directors I have known live their jobs 24 hours a day, but not to the exclusion of the more pleasant trappings of a normal life, such as family, friends, and yep, little tykes running around, some being of nappy-changing age.
These people need the full-flavor oxygen of life to create. It is part of the creative process, probably more so than a sweatshop bullpen in which ideas are actually dumbed down at a table where creative types are engaged in so-called blue-sky thinking. Give me the iconoclastic solitary creative journey any day.
At our own office at The Willard Group - and we are affiliated with Young & Rubicam, which is owned by WPP, where French works (worked) - we have our best creative director ever, Julia Rukavitsyna - and she is our first woman in this job. She is also a mother, who took off time recently to have another child. We were just happy she returned.
She works harder. Gets more done.
And, frankly, she is more creative than the string of male CDs who held the position before she did. The others looked the part - you know, earrings, long hair, Che Guevara tee-shirt - but she doesn't just talk the talk, she walks the walk.
If I were Sir Martin of WPP, I would not accept French's resignation. I believe agencies need all types, and freedom of speech should be celebrated in our industry every day - even bad and stupid speech.
Also, if I were The Sir, I would ask French: "What's in that cigar you've been smoking."
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