Highlights from International Women’s Day 2019

News31 March 2019

Last week we celebrated International Women’s Day around the Wavemaker network. Here, you can meet some of our Women at Wavemaker and stand-out (women-related) work below, plus see what our 8,600 people across 90 markets got up to on the day.

Making the Future with our clients

We believe that together with our clients we can make a difference to society through our work, and over the last year we have created campaigns that seek to improve the lives of women. These include:

Breastfeeding Friend – Public Health England UK We built the UK’s first bespoke breastfeeding voice assistant, providing advice to mums in need, whatever the hour, instantly, baby in arms, and hands-free.
She’s Mercedes – Mercedes-Benz China In our work with Mercedes-Benz China, and with Ogilvy leading the creative, we drove away from conventional advertising and content sponsorship to create an integrated platform where female car buyers could interact and share with each other, receiving over 160 million interactions.
Recruiting Female Firefighters – London Fire Brigade UK We used precision targeting and fighting fire with ambition to almost double the amount of female applicants to the LFB.
Let’s Move On! KOTEXOFO – Kimberly-Clark Hong Kong Together with Kotex, via their brand platform ‘Let’s Move On!’ to encourage women to be confident and live a full and active life whilst on their period, we empowered women in Hong Kong with a campaign that reached over 10 million.
Without Women there are no Stories – NOW TV Italy By showing Italy what we would lack in movie culture without women, we gained more than 10,000 followers in two days.
Twoj Weekend Magazine Buy-out – Poland When in December 2018 the oldest and most popular Polish porn magazine was put up for sale, together with Gazeta.pl, VMLY&R, Mastercard and Bank BGŻ BNP Paribas, we bought it immediately. Why? To close it down. Because no man should ever learn about women and relationships from porn magazines.

Women at Wavemaker

Meet some of our leaders in the area of gender equality, diversity & inclusion; find out what inspired them, and be inspired.

Allison Coley, North Asia CEO “If you fill a room with like-minded people, you will only ever get one idea. Throw in some mavericks into that room and the ideas are endless.” Read more of Allison’s thoughts on how women can impact the industry, as well as the opportunities and challenges women are facing and her career.
Ann Wixley, UK Executive Creative Director & Karen Blacket OBE, UK Government Race Equality Business Champion To coincide with International Women’s Day, WPP brought together 12 brilliant women from across its global network, in six conversations about the industry, equality and a whole lot more. In the first conversation, Ann Wixley spoke to Karen Blackett OBE, about unconventional career paths, learning to be comfortable standing out and getting your work/life blend right.
Neslihan Olcay, Turkey CEO Under Neslihan’s presidency of IAB Turkey, they will launch their first ever Gender Equality Mixx award this year. She is also a founding member of the newly established Women in Technology Association in Turkey, and as chair of the Education & Training Committee of IAB Europe, she is leading efforts to raise digital skills in both men and women thus creating a more thriving market across the region. Her efforts have seen her identified as a leader within GroupM globally, in the areas of diversity and inclusion.
Rose Huskey, South East Asia CEO In recent years, Rose has worked tirelessly to raise the standing and involvement of Wavemaker with pivotal organisations such as the Singapore committee for UN Women and IAB SEA &I, of which she is a regional board member. Through partnership and active involvement, Rose has sought to ensure increased awareness in key issues through conferences, discussion and thought leadership. This is why she was recently selected as one of the shining stars of GroupM in the area of diversity and inclusion.
Amanda Richman, US CEO Under Amanda’s leadership, Wavemaker US provides a range of initiatives to ensure Diversity & Inclusion across its offices, for which it is award-winning. They also recently won an Ad Age Best Companies to Work accreditation, which was heavily weighted on D&I initiatives. In late 2018, Amanda was personally awarded a Lifetime Achievement award from Bing, where they described her as as a champion of digital marketing whose passion and leadership has created a culture of growth to cultivate the next generation of advertising leaders.
Malu Vasallo, Philippines CEO Malu’s inspired leadership and unwavering passion for nurturing excellence has been recognized across several industry awards. Last year, she was awarded the Certificate of Excellence at Campaign Asia’s Women Leading Change Awards, and was an awardee at the Philippines Women Leadership Awards, further cementing her stature as an industry trailblazer. Under her leadership, the agency has established a reputation for creative media excellence as affirmed by the numerous awards and accolades they’ve received over the last eight years – including winning ‘Future-Making-Market of the Year’ in our recent internal awards.