The Gerety Champagne cocktails are touring this year bringing together the Gerety community around the world for networking drinks and a Gerety Talk panel
Last week London’s leading creatives joined the Gerety Awards with the MullenLowe Group to celebrate the 2022 Gerety winners over a champagne cocktail and Gerety Talk panel. Moderated by Nicola Kemp, Editorial Director at Creativebrief, the panel included:
- Jo Wallace, global executive creative director, Mediamonks
- Ayesha Walawalkar, chief strategy officer, MullenLowe
- Imali Hettiarachchi, global brand strategy, the LEGO Group
- Fura Johannesdottir, global chief creative officer, Huge
Nicola Kemp kicked-off the conversation asking what the judging process at Gerety Awards showed about the power of widening the lens when seeing the creative work. Imali Hettiarachchi, global brand strategy at the LEGO Group explained “It’s adults projecting gender constructs to kids, we are projecting stereotypes to girls and they are pushing back. If we want to resonate with this audience, as an industry we need to be on the right side of that. The Gerety winners this year are refreshing, and we can see a wider lens and hopefully this will be a redundant conversation in 10- or 15-years’ time”.
Fura Johannesdottir, global chief creative officer at Huge commented on the key to telling diverse stories: “The different perspectives come from our different upbringings and the cultures that we come from. I think in a female only jury we are more open to have conversations about this and it felt like a safe space and that just changed everything. After the experience you come out thinking about your team and how you are mixing people when doing the work to be able to have all the perspectives. You understand even better you need to have this diversity and create a safe space in your own company for this to happen”.
About the role on creativity to shift the lens and make more radical choices Jo Wallace, global executive creative director at Mediamonks said: “The word radical is key. It means upsetting the status quo and going to the heart of the matter and today it is hard to get to this with so many messages. More and more the audience wants action, they don’t just want to be told something, they want something that has a meaning to them. The more successful brands moving forward will be those who put people first and have cultural relevance. It is also important to consider technology is the enabler, but creativity is still the differentiator”.
“I think it is hard”, explained Ayesha Walawalkar, chief strategy officer at MullenLowe, referring to maintaining the positive energy with teams in a shift of hybrid working. “I think we are all struggling to find the right balance since we have worked out, we can all be very productive working in our pyjamas! And we have also worked out in the last few months that there is a real joy in being back in the room with people and sometimes you get to places you would not get to on your own. So, we must get our balance”.
Gerety Awards, co-founder Lucía Ongay, concluded: “It was such fun bringing all the past judges and this year’s winners together last week. London is a creative leader in the advertising world, and it is great to see that Gerety and celebrating the female vision of advertising is such an important and established part of that.”
The Gerety Champagne cocktails are touring this year bringing together the Gerety community around the world for networking drinks and a Gerety Talk panel. Next stops are Paris, Tokyo, and New York.
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